Macklin McCall says the cost of fighting a wildfire is far more than the cost of mitigation.
The West Kelowna-Peachland MLA is speaking from experience as a former forestry firefighter and now the shadow critic for BC’s Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness.
While he admits that wildfire management and response falls more under the Ministry of Forests, the two ministries become intertwined when an out-of-control wildfire threatens BC communities.
It’s something Okanagan residents know all too well and it was seen on a major scale two summers ago when Emergency Support Services was activated for several weeks during the McDougall Creek wildfire.
If McCall had his way, the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness would be called upon less, because he says BC needs to be more proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to wildfires.
“We don’t focus on proactive stuff as much as we should and what we used to,” he said during a recent interview with NowMedia video host Jim Csek. “Controlled burns, going in and cutting out the fuel and all that stuff…we should be looking at emergencies before they happen.”
McCall has talked to forestry experts since becoming an MLA and says he’s learned that there’s around 20 years of fuel all stacked up around BC just waiting to either be moved or burned.
If that doesn’t happen by the government’s own accord, under planned and supervised conditions, that fuel becomes a nightmare for first responders if a wildfire sparks nearby.
But it’s not just about eliminating fuels in the wilderness. McCall says he’s had conversations with Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar about fire fuels within communities.
“It’s one thing where you’ve got massive fuel kilometres outside the community, but what about inside the community?,” he noted.
“FireSmart is taking your own property, getting the knowledge and getting experience and getting someone who knows this stuff to show you what to do to remove the fuel around your house.”
That way, he explains, if a fire does roar through a community, there’s a better chance that houses and other structures can survive.
McCall boasts that the City of West Kelowna is potentially leading the whole province when it comes to implementing FireSmart initiatives, something the community saw the importance of first hand in 2023.
He says he recently chatted with West Kelowna Fire Rescue Chief Jason Brolund about the McDougall Creek wildfire.
They discussed things like FireSmart and how to make sure people, properties and infrastructure are as protected as possible when faced with a catastrophic event like that.
They also talked about another element of wildfire proactiveness – initial attack – and its role in preventing small blazes from spreading quickly during the dry and windy summer.
“(McDougall Creek was) quite an interesting fire. How it happened…how it started, whether the resources immediately being deployed were adequate or not, there’s a lot of moving parts to it,” McCall said. “How can we improve on that response by the government?”
Since assuming office in the fall, McCall says he has talked to several emergency response groups and personnel to “get a lay of the land” on what’s going well and what’s not going well or needs improvement.
Although the Ministry of Forests is not his jurisdiction, expect the former firefighter to stay involved in wildfire discussions as he continues with his role as the shadow critic for the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness.
