Sunshine Coasters are still absorbing the human cost of the Old Sechelt Mine wildfire, and now the District of Sechelt is getting a sense of the economic impact.
The District-owned company that manages the Community Forest operations (Sechelt Community Projects Inc.) says about 150 hectares of its tenure was destroyed by the fire.
The company says it could mean a negative bottom line in the coming months.
Mayor Bruce Milne also says there’s another cost, beyond the lost timber value, “I, personally, can’t tell you how that works out in terms or our obligations to salvage and re-plant, but I think there will be some costs coming out of the fire simply because we’re the license holder.”
Milne says on top of that there will be lost revenue, at least in the short term, because fire risks have forced a halt to logging operations throughout the Coast.
Profits from the Community Forest have been used to fund several projects around the Sunshine Coast since 2006.
It could still be some time before company officials and the Ministry of Forests are able to get into the fire zone to do an assessment.
