SaltWire E-Edition

Wildfires affect timber stock

Lumber yard owner calculating losses from central Newfoundland forest fires

BARB DEAN-SIMMONS SALTWIRE NETWORK barb.dean-simmons @saltwire.com @BarbDeanSimmons

LETHBRIDGE, N.L. — Kevin Sexton can’t get the images out of his mind.

“I could cry,” says the seasoned forester as he remembers the animals he saw running for their lives, disoriented and confused in the heavy smoke blowing across central Newfoundland.

“The poor things … moose, rabbits, birds … they were just going crazy … so disoriented … some running away from the flames, some running towards them.

“I can’t even talk about it,” he told SaltWire Network, his voice catching a little.

It’s been long days and sleepless nights for Sexton, who owns Sexton’s Lumber in Lethbridge, on the Bonavista Peninsula.

The mill is hundreds of kilometres away from the massive fire, but he depends on the woods of central Newfoundland.

He sources most of his timber in that region, an area he calls “the wood basket” for the island.

Until two weeks ago he had crews and equipment logging in the Paradise Lake area, about 40 kilometres from Grand Falls-Windsor. Then came the fires. Lightning strikes, coupled with a tinder-dry forest after weeks of hot weather, was all that was needed to create the first sparks.

From there the flames travelled fast.

Sexton’s first task was to get his crew and 25 pieces of heavy equipment — skidders, harvesters, excavators — away from the fire.

“That first week we moved it closer to Grand Falls, to a gravel pit about 10 kilometres from the town. We thought it would be safe there.”

‘SCARY AT TIMES’

But the fire kept moving.

This week they had to relocate the millions of dollars' worth of equipment again.

Sexton and his crew worked day and night for three days to bring the machines into Grand FallsWindsor.

“It was scary at times,” he said, describing smoke so thick you could hardly see where you were going.

“There were times when the fire was burning parallel to us,” he told SaltWire Network. “You could see flames going into the sky. The trees were just exploding.”

Sexton has seen forest fires before, but none like this one.

Before this, he said, he's seen fires that could to be knocked down in a day or two.

“But I've never seen anything like this. I actually seen … the water bombers dropping water and you could tell it was just vaporized, just steam before it even got close to the ground.”

Sexton says the waterbomber pilots and forestry officials are doing yeoman service, putting everything they have into this battle.

“But they’ve had no co-operation from Mother Nature,” he said.

Over the weekend the wind gusted to about 60 km/h.

It was like adding gas to the flames, pushing the fire to burn faster, he said.

“Last night, when we finished moving our equipment, the fire was just 12 kilometres from Grand Falls,” he said.

It’s been an unpredictable fire, Sexton added, with winds “crazy” and “shifting in all directions.”

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get the smell of smoke out of his nearly-new pickup truck.

“It just seeps into everything,” he said.

Most of Sexton’s heavy equipment is safe now, stored in the town.

There was just one machine they couldn’t go back for — the smoke made it too dangerous to travel back in — and he figures that could be a $750,000 loss.

Still, that’s insignificant compared to forest that’s been lost.

BIG LOSS OF SUPPLY

Sexton has already done some calculations for his company, based on the size of the cutting area they were working in and the volume of timber they were recovering from a hectare of forest.

“In standing timber alone, we’ve lost about five or six months’ supply for the mill,” he said. “That’s about 3,400 tractor trailer loads of logs.”

Immediately, 50 of his employees have been affected by the fire, he said.

There are about 25 heavy equipment operators and mechanics, and another 25 truck drivers, who would normally be involved with Sexton’s commercial logging site at Paradise Lake.

If not for the fire, they would have continued logging there until this fall, until the access road got too rough to travel on.

“We don't really know when we're going get back in and if there's going be anything left to go back for,” he said Monday.

The mill at Lethbridge is still running, said Sexton, but they’ve got only a two-week supply of timber in inventory.

“Unless I can find that timber somewhere else, the mill could lose weeks of production.”

That could affect the 100 or so people who work at the manufacturing site.

HELPLESS FEELING

The hardest thing about this is the feeling of being helpless, Sexton said.

Last week he was getting ready, at the request of forestry officials, to use his excavators to try to build a fire break at the front of the blaze.

“We were getting geared up to go, but then the fire analyst said it was too dangerous to put people or equipment in there right now.”

All they can do, he said, is hope for rain, hours and hours of rain to drown the fire front that runs for kilometres.

“Mother Nature started this,” said Sexton, “and there’s only thing that can stop it, and that’s Mother Nature.

“We need three or four days of steady rain … because everything right now is so dry it's just blowing up. It's unbelievable.”

For a moment Sexton ponders whether he’ll ever be able to get back to Paradise Lake.

If there’s no timber left standing, though, what next?

He says his company, one of the biggest logging and milling operations in central Newfoundland, will be “short quite a bit of timber."

“I guess we just have to hope and pray there’s more timber available there in central Newfoundland and the (forestry) department will be able to allocate more timber for us to harvest.”

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2022-08-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

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