LOS ANGELES, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- The cost of
fighting the 245-square-mile (382-square-km) wildfire in Los Angeles approached 50
million dollars on Monday, fire officials said.
As the fire was still raging in remote areas, the
true overall cost of the largest blaze in Los Angeles County would be far
greater, the National Forest Service (NFS) said.
"We won't know the true costs until the fire's out,
the heavy rains come and the roads are fixed," NFS Service information officer
Nathan Judy said. "We won't know those costs for some time."
The estimated cost of fighting the Station Fire as of
Monday evening was 49.5 million dollars.
Closely monitoring the costs of fighting a monstrous
blaze like the Station Fire is vital, but those costs are only a fraction of the
final tab shared by individuals and taxpayers, according to authors of an April
2009 report by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition in Colorado.
"The millions of dollars spent to extinguish large
wildfires are widely reported and used to underscore the severity of these
events," the authors said in their report. "Extinguishing a large wildfire,
however, accounts for only a fraction of the total costs associated with a
wildfire event.
"Residents in the wild land-urban interface are
generally seen as the most vulnerable to fire, but a fuller accounting of the
costs of fire also reveals impacts to all Americans and gives a better picture
of the losses incurred when our forests burn."
Full accounting of wildfire costs includes impacts to
watersheds, ecosystems, infrastructure, businesses, individuals, and local and
national economies, according to the coalition's 17-page report, "The True Cost
of Wildfire in the Western U.S."
As of Monday evening, the arson-ignited Station Fire
had contributed to the deaths of two firefighters, destroyed 78 homes and two
commercial properties, and burned 157,220 acres, according to the NFS.
The Station Fire was considered 56 percent contained
on Monday, with full containment hoped for on Sept. 15.
