Nearly $50 mln spent to fight Los Angeles wildfire

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, Kazinform refers to Xinhuanet.

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