A man living in northwest British Columbia has been billed more than $100,000 to cover the province’s cost of fighting a wildfire that started on his property in 2019.
Eldon Whalen was ordered to pay back $100,688 that the government spent extinguishing a wildfire that spread from a burn pile on his property in the Kispiox Valley, roughly 450 kilometres northwest of Prince George, B.C.
“The open fire that caused the wildfire was deliberately ignited, the defences under [the applicable law] do not apply, and, if not for the immediate response of the B.C. Wildfire Service, the impacts of the wildfire would likely have been even more widespread,” read a decision from B.C.’s Forest Appeals Commission this spring.
“Whalen has not convinced
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