The carpenter who built the recently-vandalized McIntyre Creek bridge says he is 'choked up' about the incident.

'We built that bridge in our shop; we take pride in our work,' Gerry Rivest told the Star Tuesday.

'We ae professional carpenters, and to see this ... I don't get it.'

The bridge was vandlaized sometime over the Christmas holidays, city councillor Jan Stick told Monday evening's standing committee meeting.

She said a new pedestrian bridge was installed at McIntyre Creek, replacing an older one, just weeks before Christmas.

'Over the holidays, some citizen although I use that term loosely tore off the railings and built a campfire,' she said. 'It blows my mind, frankly, that someone would do this.

'I'm shocked.'

'We plunked it in just before Christmas,' said Rivest, who contracts work to Grey Wolf Construction Management Inc.

'I took my dad by on Boxing Day to show him the work, and it was still up then,' he said.

Sometime after that day, vandals ripped off part of the wood railing and used it as fuel for a bonfire set nearby, said Stick.

'That wooden handle was there to prevent kids from falling in the creek. And, I mean, there's a forest full of trees around; why didn't they just use those?' asked Rivest, rhetorically.

'Lots of people were really pleased that we had put that bridge back in. We had worked hard in 20-below weather to put that in ... and some dirty rat went and wrecked it.'

Rivest confirmed the wood was treated with a chemical coating that, when bruned, would be highly toxic.

'So they were inhaling toxic fumes while they were doing all this,' he said.

The broken railing has since been fixed and the debris from the bonfire cleaned up, costing the city $500 in labour and repairs, said Gilles LaprÈ, of the parks maintenance office.

LaprÈ said the city will be replacing the wood railings with metal railings.

Rivest suggested the Porter Creek site become part of a regular patrol rotation by the local RCMP.

The Whitehorse detachment asks anyone with information about the vandalism incident to contact police at 667-5555.