© 2002
The Nugget Newspaper
Sisters, Oregon
All rights reserved

Send us an email

Display Advertising
This is a PDF file. View with Adobe Acrobat Reader. 

The contents of the on-line edition of The Nugget represent a selection among the stories that appear in the weekly print edition.

Fire costs Ranch thousands
By Jim Cornelius

Black Butte Ranch management, guests and residents are counting their blessings. They didn't have to evacuate and the Ranch is safe.

Things could have been worse.

But the three days of threat from the Link Fire did have their cost.

Full accounting of the extra labor costs and lost revenues won't be complete until the end of the month, according to Ranch manager Loy Helmly.

However, estimates place the losses in revenue at about $45,000.

According to Helmly, $15,000 was lost to early check-outs.

"We didn't have any complete cancellations; we just had some people leave early last week when the smoke was the worst and the danger seemed to be the worst," Helmly said.

Those check-outs translated to an additional $30,000 or so in lost revenue for golf, food and beverage service and retail sales.

Helmly did not have an estimate for extra labor costs associated with the heightened alert for fire and police.

Still, the losses and headaches of the Link Fire were much less than they would have been if the emergency had forced an evacuation.

Last year's Cache Mountain Fire evacuation was estimated to have cost the Ranch up to $100,000 per day.

Back to front page