The quick response by individuals, industry and the province’s forest protection personnel last week is being credited for snuffing a wildfire that could have cut power to not only the Mitsue Industrial Park east of Slave Lake, but also to Nipisi oilfields, some 100 km north of this community.
Atco Electric employee Danny Schmode says a wandering bear attempting to scale a power pole sparked the fire about 3:40 Wednesday afternoon.
The bear died instantly and dropped to the ground when it touched the line. In doing so, it prompted insulators on the line to begin ‘bouncing’, leaving the two lines “whipping and waving so violently” that eventually they touched, creating a fire ball that dropped to the dry fuels below. From there it was just a matter of time until the light wind drove the flames into the black spruce stand at the edge of the road, heading north.
“It’s a major transmission line,” Schmode told The Leader the next morning of the power line that heads through that same stand of trees. And its loss “could have taken down (power at) Mitsue (Industrial Park) and even Nipisi” which also gets its power from the same line.
“It was lucky that (Sustainable Resource Development and industry crews) acted so quickly.” The fire began about one kilometre west of the Mitsue park.
In fact, Doug Maurice, a ChevronTexaco operator was driving down the industrial park road as the bear was shinnying up the power pole.
“He got fried,” Maurice said matter-of-factly, “then we saw the torch” when the wildly gyrating lines touched.
The ‘explosion’ sparked a fire about 10 power poles away from where the bear dropped to the ground, and the operator said he rushed up with his fire extinguisher, but the fire’s speed “was amazing.
“A fire extinguisher wouldn’t have had a chance.” The flames, he added, climbed into the black spruce crowns – with a remarkable speed.
An operator with the company for more than a dozen years, Maurice said he witnessed the wildfires that threatened the industrial park’s four lumber and two petroleum companies in both 1998 and 2001.
“And I thought ‘Oh, oh, here we go again.’”
Trina Torgerson was traveling down the same stretch of highway when the power lines began jumping, and said she, too, saw the lines ‘explode’ in her rear view mirror.
“I thought I could see a ‘smoke’,” said the Weyerhaeuser employee, so she called 911, then members of her company’s own initial attack crew.
She said the fire “was crowning (reaching the spruce crowns) within minutes, and then it was gone” north into the stand.
In fact, the province’s helitack crews were en route to the fire minutes after Torgerson’s call. About the same time, three CL215 air tankers were dispatched from Slave Lake’s air tanker base, and a second three-tanker group was summoned from Lac La Biche to attack the blaze, says Christie Ward an information officer with the Lesser Slave Wildfire Management area.
An air tanker unit of B26s was also dispatched from Slave Lake, but was diverted to a fire in the High Level forest before it could make its first drops.
Witnesses told The Leader the air tankers were dropping their loads of water at about 30-second intervals, but Ward credits industry, ATCO Electric, the Municipal District of Lesser Slave River, its regional fire service and the RCMP for their quick response, too. She says the combined efforts allowed firefighting crews to limit the fire’s spread to six hectares before it was brought to its knees less than two days later.
“Thanks to the joint efforts of these organizations and their personnel, the fire was promptly brought under control.”

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