A B.C. man has been ordered to pay the province $100,688 for what it cost the government to fight a wildfire he ignited in 2019.
The incident dates back to March 31, 2019, when Realtor Eldon Whalen lit a burn pile on his property. Over the coming weeks, he returned regularly with buckets of water and hand tools to monitor the fire, according to the decision. Later investigations determined the wildfire was sparked by the open fire “left unattended and not extinguished, which smouldered and escaped due to fire creep and gusting winds weeks after its initial ignition.”
Whalen, for his part, contended the burn pile was not left unattended and that he satisfied the provisions in the Wildfire Act. He said he believed “embers travelled underground, through water-soaked ground through some fuels before reaching the forest.”