When wildfires light up Canada’s forests and threaten communities, people are left asking: What lessons have we learned?
We saw it last year in Alberta and we’ll see it this year in B.C. following a particularly brutal fire season that has forced more than 40,000 residents from their homes before even reaching its midway point.
Despite the devastation of interface wildfires, mitigation is coming along slowly in some forested areas and not at all in others, leaving many B.C. communities severely at risk, according to professional foresters.
“It's a no brainer. Absolutely, there are communities throughout British Columbia that are at high to severe risk because they are not doing anything,” said Garnet Mierau, senior planning forester with Forsite Consultants, a company that works with municipalities to implement forest management practices.
After wildfire destroyed 239 homes in Kelowna in 2003, the province created the Strategic Wildfire Prevention Initiative (SWPI), which provides funding to help communities manage hazardous fuels in a two-kilometre radius around city perimeters.
In addition to work they are doing within their city, municipalities and regional districts are required to pay for 25% of planning costs and 10% of operational costs to manage surrounding Crown land.
However, professional consultants say the program is out of reach for many smaller towns that cannot afford their portion, while other cities refuse to invest in fuel management on Crown land, something they see as the provincial government’s responsibility.
“At the end of the day, they are getting communities to pay for activities on Crown land, and I know that doesn't sit well with a lot of people and it's an inhibitor,” Mierau said. “It stops people from playing the game…
“If you're doing it all inside your community but doing nothing on the perimeter, well that's basically Fort McMurray. They did nothing on the outside of the community and that's the result.”
B.C.’s Forest Practices Board reported in 2015 that, despite new programs implemented since 2003, 10% or less of hazardous forest fuels had been treated and funding to protect at-risk communities was inadequate. The board concluded the cost of treatment is excessive, at $10,000 per hectare.
“We can never do enough,” said Kamloops-based forest consultant Bruce Morrow, who has worked in the area of fuel management since 1986 and in several Interior communities, including the City of Kamloops, Kelowna and the District of Logan Lake.
“Are we being efficient? It’s really really hard, especially because of the way the funding process works. It really doesn’t allow us to do what we want to do.”
Because of the expense of the SWPI program, regional districts that are responsible for vasts areas of land are challenged to come up with funds because of their limited tax base, Morrow said.
“The TNRD has about 120 communities that need protection and they are doing two or three per year, that’s all they can afford,” he said.
“We will never, ever ever get even part of the work done, because after five or seven years, you have to go back and maintain. We will never catch up.”
According to the TNRD, projects have been completed in seven communities: Heffley Lake, Whitecroft, Lac Le Jeune, 70 Mile, South Green Lake, Loon Lake and Botanie.
Morrow said Kamloops has an ambitious program this year that covers 200 hectares of land, while Logan Lake has some of the most robust fuel management practices in the province. That includes a 60-foot wide firebreak around the entire town — though Mierau said clear-cutting trees around all cities is not an effective one-size-fits-all solution.
Beyond this buffer zone, Logan Lake utilizes provincial grants to mitigate Crown lands, afforded in part from revenue through its Community Forest.
Logan Lake is a leader in wildfire mitigation, 14 years into its program, but fire chief Dan Leighton said the district struggles with the grant process. He said the provincial government should be paying for 100% of fuel management on Crown land.
“I think the province itself has made it too cumbersome for small communities to get through,” Leighton said. “And let's face it, if there is no danger, there's no interest...
“Here in Logan Lake, we are a small community but we have to be the first line of defense and stand up for ourselves.”
Wildfire sparked near Logan Lake shortly before the wildfire crisis erupted in B.C. this summer, but crews were able to effectively stop it from spreading.
“It was in an area we mitigated two years ago and it went nowhere,” Mierau said. “To me that's the difference between Logan Lake being on the front page versus Ashcroft. These treatments absolutely work.”
When asked earlier this month what the government will do to mitigate the wildfire risk going forward, Minister for Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, Doug Donaldson said the provincial government is focused on the current emergency response to the wildfire crisis in B.C.
But he did say that government would again be looking at the recommendations laid out in the Firestorm 2003 Provincial Review that followed the last devastating wildfire season and predicted more significant and severe wildfires unless action was taken.
“What I would love for them to do is put more resources toward prevention and strategic planning at a landscape level,” Mierau said.
“What we are seeing are landscape level fires. We aren't seeing little, tiny fires. These are massive landscape level fires and they require landscape level planning.”
