By Chad Klassen

Economic reports shows wildfires were good, bad for business in Kamloops

Feb 14, 2018 | 4:15 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Thompson-Nicola Regional District has a better sense of the true economic effect last summer’s wildfires had on businesses in the affected areas. Towns like Cache Creek, Ashcroft, Clinton, and all up the Cariboo suffered incredible losses, both structurally and financially.

A new report released by the TNRD estimates more than $30 million in direct economic losses. 

“We asked people to self-report what they thought their economic loss was,” said economic recovery manager Colin O’Leary, who was hired by the TNRD to write the report. “Then we had a couple industries where we had very good data on their sales and occupancy.”

Smoke and highway closures all played a role in slowing down, and in some cases halting business. The report also shows the number of job losses due to the fire. 

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“Over 100,000 employment hours were lost. Some businesses had to lay off workers permanently,” said O’Leary. “The other thing we asked going forward, we’re at about $30 million now as an estimate, but the vast majority of business owners indicated they expect further losses going forward.”

In Kamloops, which was not included in the economic study, there was some good and some bad with the fires. While there were more people in the city taking up hotel beds, that wasn’t necessarily a benefit to various hotels. 

“Occupancy was up. We didn’t have a lot of extra rooms. We had a loss of rooms that would’ve typically been at a higher rate,” said general manager of DoubleTree Kamloops Rhian Williams. “But of course, we filled those rooms with evacuees that had come in at a government rate.”

The government rate of $99 a night is nearly half of the rate in the peak season of summer at $179 a night at the DoubleTree By Hilton downtown. Some other hotels in the city had similar stories. 

Meantime, businesses like Warner Rentals were busy donating equipment needed at places like the Pow Wow grounds, but also renting equipment to government agencies. Estimates from the company saw a $15,000 spike during the fires. 

“The emergency programs like the TNRD, they had us quite involved right away for the support centres down at the Sandman Centre and Pow Wow grounds,” said sales manager at Warner Rentals Nathan Mutcher. “The ministry, the fire centre itself in Cache Creek were involved a little bit with supplying equipment for the setup of their fire camp.”

Warner Rentals provided items like generators and lighting. The company expects to be busy in helping with the ongoing recovery effort this year and beyond, and with that will come more financial benefits. 

“After the fires, we’ll be involved in renting equipment for road repair, track repair, anything to do with [agriculture]. We’re going to get a lot of the agricultural needs too from the people that were affected by the fires,” said Mutcher. “Them repairing their ground, building new barns, just rejuvenating the area we’re going to be apart of.”