Organizations Still Tallying Wildfire Costs

A number of local organizations are still crunching the numbers when it comes to recovery costs from the summer of wildfires. As of mid-August, Northern Health had spent $3 million in its efforts. “When the wildfires occurred, we had to respond to provide care for an additional 200 to 250 people who needed long-term care and acute care,” explains Cathy Ulrich, CEO for Northern Health. Those, though, are not the final numbers. The Province has yet to release the numbers for how much the City of Prince George needs to be compensated, but the accounting for its is different from any emergency they’ve had to respond to in the past. “When we provide services that are for the City of Prince George, there are very strict rules around what we can claim as eligible expenses. Part of that is that we can’t claim for our normal hours of work. We can only claim for things that are above and beyond,” explains Kathleen Soltis, City Manager. In the case of this past summer, the City was responding to a provincial emergency. It means the City can claim all the hours put toward emergency response. In other words, if an employee of the City worked in the Emergency Operations Centre from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., the City will be compensated for that entire 12 hours, not just the additional four hours of “overtime.” However, with the size of the response and the number of organizations it entailed, there is no expectation the compensation will be forthcoming soon.