Firefighting Costs For Canyon Creek Complex Near $30M

By Amanda Peacher

Published September 18, 2015 at 5:27 PM PDT

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Crews from the Oregon National Guard work to clean up hotspots in the fight against the Canyon Creek Complex fire on Aug. 27, 2015.

Lori Iverson

Fire officials are starting to get a handle on the cost of Oregon's most destructive wildfires this year.

To date, the lightning-caused Canyon Creek Complex has cost about $30 million. The bill is shared between the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and the Oregon Department of Forestry.

"So we split that based on the number of acres across the entire incident," said Tracy Wrolson, who is the assistant district forester ODF's Central Oregon district. "ODF, private grounds had about 18 percent of the total acreage on Canyon Creek."

That means that ODF is responsible for a little less than 5 million dollars of the total cost. The agency pays for large fires through a special emergency fund.

Other agencies have had to dip into natural resource budgets to foot this year's wildfire suppression costs.