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Forest firefighter trainees attend a course in Fort Smith in August of last year. Because of the severe fire season, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources hired additional emergency firefighters last summer. - NNSL file photo

ENR: Bad fire season ahead
GNWT cuts fire suppression budget by $118,000, finance minister assures more money available if needed

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, February 9, 2015

ENTERPRISE
In a series of ongoing community visits, representatives from the GNWT are painting a gloomy picture of this summer's upcoming fire season.

During an appearance before the council of the Hamlet of Enterprise Feb. 2, Daniel Allaire, manager of forests with Environment and Natural Resources' (ENR) South Slave region, used a variety of facts and figures, along with his own personal experience, to predict this summer could be a repeat of last year.

He especially pointed to the extreme drought conditions of last summer.

"My personal opinion on that is I think we're going to be in for a fairly dry season again," he said.

Allaire said it appears that a long-term drought condition is well established.

"Usually, drought cycles are three years," he noted, pointing to the drought cycle of 1994-1996, during which three million hectares of forest burned in 1995.

There was also a three-year drought from 1979-1981, he said, adding it looks like the past fire season was the first year of another drought cycle.

"I suspect the next couple of summers we'll have a lot of fires-and severe fires from what I can see," he predicted.

Allaire noted that the winters of 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 were among the driest on record in the NWT.

"We're on our way for another one," responded Coun. Jim Dives at the Enterprise meeting.

Despite this dire prediction, the GNWT did not increase-in fact, it has cut- funding for fire suppression in this year's recently-released budget.

According to the budget, the GNWT set aside $7.5 million last year for fire suppression, and has earmarked $7.4 million this year-a decrease of $118,000.

In an e-mail statement to News/North, Finance Minister Michael Miltenberger pointed to a formula the government uses to allocate money for fire suppression activity.

"Funding for wildland fire management in the NWT is based on a 10-year average of suppression expenses," he stated.

"As was the case last year, additional funding will be available in 2015 for fire suppression, if it is required. Our first commitment is to protect the people, property and land in the Northwest Territories."

In his budget address Feb. 5, the minister described last year's fire season as the worst in the history of the Northwest Territories and reiterated it cost the GNWT $55 million - or three per cent of this year's budget - to fight.

To get in front of next summer's predicted blazes, ENR is in the midst of visiting a total of 25 communities in its wildland fire review. The meetings began in Wrigley Jan. 27 and will continue through February.

Allaire says effective fire management should include community consultation.

"This is one of the reasons why we're doing this tour," he said.

In Enterprise, the council was told there were 385 forest fires in the NWT during the 2014 fire season - six in the Inuvik region, 32 in the Sahtu, 52 in the Deh Cho, 143 in the North Slave and 152 in the South Slave.

Of those fires, 17 were suspected to have been caused by people with the rest caused by lightning strikes.

"The total area affected was over three million hectares," said Allaire, noting that in an average year around 900,000 hectares are affected.

"So we were like 350 per cent over our average."

The 152 South Slave fires covered just under a half-million hectares.

Allaire said this means-with a little over 15 million hectares of land in the South Slave, excluding parks-3.25 per cent of the region's land mass burned last summer.

"On average, it's under one per cent," he said.

Allaire went on to use another example to illustrate just how dry it was last summer - fires were able to burn over wetlands and muskegs.

"This past year, the fires burned through that like it wasn't even there," he said. "Some of the areas, they were so dry you could walk through with your running shoes without getting your feet wet. On an average year, you would probably have water right up to your knees."

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