At the start of what’s shaping up to be an unusually warm and dry winter in the Okanagan, forest fire prevention is coming to mind earlier than usual.
Fuel mitigation, among other measures, is what West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund has been advocating for years, and the devastating fires of last summer raised his platform to spread that message.
At the United Nations, where he was invited to speak at an event focused on carbon pricing and the impacts of warming global temperatures, the world got an insight into what the Okanagan is facing.
“Climate change became very real for West Kelowna on Aug. 16,” Brolund said, referring to the date the McDougall Creek fire rapidly grew, jumped Okanagan Lake and prompted the City of Kelowna to declare a state of emergency as the fire eventually grew to 140 square kilometers. It wasn’t deemed officially under control until Oct. 5.
“Over $20 million was spent reacting to my fire, not to mention the insurance losses, which could be triple that.”
Today, he’s still sharing that message.
“I was able to talk about, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could take even a percentage of the money that was spent putting out this fire, and use that money proactively, to stop the next one,” Brolund said this week. “We certainly could do that, and put that money to work, and it’s probably the kind of thing we need to do going forward.”
As is, fires are now overwhelming the on-the-ground resources available.
Looking back, Brolund’s recollection of the days of the fire were overwhelming.
“The wind was blowing so hard you couldn’t close the door on the truck, that’s how hard it was,” he said. “Day turned to night but night turned to day from the orange glow of the flames, and the heat that night, all of these things are searing into the memories of all our firefighters.”
The out-of-control wildfire forced thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes, and hundreds of structures were lost.
While it may be difficult to look back and take positives away from such a catastrophic event, Brolund says a lot of lessons were learned from those sleepless nights on the front lines of the firefight.
“A lot of what we did was born out of major interface fires that we’ve had in the past, 2003 certainly not being the least of it, so we followed those lessons learned, but we had many of our own as well,” he said.
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