By Andru McCracken

Imagine being high up in the mountains in the forest and finding out that there is a wildfire fast approaching from below. David Carson needn’t imagine it. Last Thursday he lived it.

David was operating the yarder for his father Gordon Carson’s skyline logging system six kilometres up the Small River logging road. The yarder is a motorized spindle, which lets in or lets out a carriage carrying trees from high on the mountainside down a skyline to the valley below. He said it was a little after 1 p.m. on Thursday, June 12 when his co-worker told him there was a small fire on the hill below him, and one above his coworkers on the mountain.

Before he could leave his post, he had to finish yarding a load of logs to the valley floor. Then he needed to get the message out to forestry firefighters and shut off his gear for the day. As it turns out, shutting down the gear was the least important of the things he had to do: the fire would later consume the yarder.

At the time of the first report of the fire, David couldn’t see any of it but he was in close contact with his workmates over the radio. He radioed to Hauer Brothers Mill to pass the message onto forestry.

Having shutoff the gear and made contact, David had to get out of there. To get to and from work each day David drives a two wheel drive motorbike up and down extremely steep terrain, and said it is not uncommon to fall off on the way down. He said a fall is usually harmless, but today it mattered. Crashing the bike could mean the end of the bike or worse.

In just 15 minutes after it was first reported, the fire grew to 15 acres. Speeding down the mountain, Carson came as close as 100 feet to the fire, driving through the smoke.

“Everything was so dry,” he said. “The fire was moving fast.”

When asked if he was scared during his descent, he said he was trying not to be.

David’s father, Gordon said that the fire burnt the entire block where the yarder was.

Gordon said it is unclear how the fire began.

“We don’t know for sure,” he said. “It started fairly close to where our lines were.”

Barb Durau, a Fire Information Officer with the Prince George Fire Centre, said that the cause is under investigation.

Gordon said that he had forest fire insurance, a requirement for working in Crown forests and insurance on the yarder. Replacing the yarder though presents an issue.

“It’s a bit of a problem because I built that machine. You can’t buy one,” he said.

He isn’t sure if insurers will cover the full value.

Beyond losing the machine, there isn’t enough wood left on that block to justify flying a new yarder up there.

Other equipment was damaged too. The skyline, a single lengthy cable suspended from the mountaintop to the other side of the valley is worth $50,000.

Forestry estimates that the final size of the fire was 108 hectares

“It’s a real pain because we were just about finished there,” he said. Gordon said that they wouldn’t be able to log anymore this summer.

The forestry firefighters brought in water bombers and dropped flame retardant to prevent the fire from being swept out in the main valley during downward slope breezes in the evening. They also used a helicopter to dispense flammable gel to light parts of the hillside on fire.

Later they would send in a unit crew to burn off alder slides to prevent the fire from spreading further.

The fire was contained and in ‘mop up’ by Sunday morning.