EMERGENCY RISK REDUCTION

The wildfires are daily in the Canadian news. And this gets my ire up when I hear the ongoing news. It doesn’t have to happen this way.

We cannot avoid lightning strikes that set some of the vast BC forest ablaze. This is nature. Maybe storms are more frequent or severe, but long term evidence of this is sketchy.  But human causes can be controlled. Some think that if human-induced, it’s only done by a crazy arsonist – an intentional fire.  Untrue. Most of the human-caused fires are “unintentional”. It may be the carelessness with a campfire. (There’s a complete campfire ban in BC at this time.) It may be a cigarette butt tossed out the window. (A recent report of a $550 fine for someone in Vancouver.) Another cause is by 4-wheelers, who tear through the rural dirt tracks, complete with hot exhausts and possible sparks. These recreational users can be a kilometer down the road when the tiny spark erupts into a small flame in the tender-dry grass. The wind picks it up, and a fire is off to the races.  It’s no wonder that some backcountry travel has now been suspended.

The other way to mitigate the fires is by reducing the fuel load in BC forests.  Once a fire starts, there’s less tendency for it to burn out of control. For it to become an inferno. This requires forest management. One method is through prescribed burning, or controlled burning of the fuel load. In a nutshell, this means not allowing a huge ‘fire load’ to build up in the forest.

The principle is simple: Allow the small fires to burn in a natural way, and avoid a firestorm later. This is resisted for a couple of reasons. More people are living in rural areas, purposely surrounded by woods. There is high public resistance to a fire that is purposely set is. It makes no sense. It destroys tracks of woodland. It looks bad, and postcard-perfect mountain vistas in BC are ruined. But prescribed burning actually makes for a more healthy forest. One that thrives – with plant, soil, and animal life. And it prevents extreme wildfires that destroy all three.

An inferno is how to best describe what is happening today in British Columbia. Hundreds of fires, with more erupting daily during this dry summer. The cost of both containing them and rebuilding burned structures is enormous. Thousands of firefighters have been involved, including from several other countries. Hundreds of thousands of hectares burned, including numerous homes. Many thousands of people evacuated. The cost estimate is over $500 million.

The cost of prescribed burning would be a fraction. But to date, there’s little public focus to do this. After our fire season finally ends, there will be a post-mortem of the summer. Perhaps sensible emergency planning for future wildfires can be put in place.  Let’s hope so. None of us look forward to another wildfire season such as in 2017.

Thanks for reading.