Okanagan residents can’t control the heat, wind or many other conditions that lend themselves to wildfires that have become so common every summer, but they’re not entirely helpless.
Clearing the forest floor of debris can make a difference during a wildfire, which one organization says was made evident during last summer’s McDougall Creek wildfire.
The wildly devastating fire covered more ground and took out more houses than most other fires in recent history, but Dave Gill is the general manager of Ntityix Resources, a Westbank-owned forest and resource management company, said there was evidence that it was tempered in some areas. Each year he and his team have been dispatched to areas around the Central Okanagan, clearing the forest floor.
“We did some work in and around the Rose Valley area, about seven or eight years ago,” Gill said.
“I was on site with the City of West Kelowna fire department and some people from BC Wildfire Services last fall, after the fire came through, and that was quite effective at actually allowing the ground crews to stay there and actually fight that fire.”
He explained that the fire coming down the hill hit an area that had been treated and it slowed its explosive growth enough that firefighters could make some headway.
In other areas, the fire had gained too much velocity and blew through, regardless of work done. What is clear to Gill, however, is that it can make a difference and more needs to be done.
“This is only a drop in the bucket of what we really need to do,” he said.
“All of our efforts over the last dozen years or so have been focused on the edge of communities. protecting the areas that really require it the most. What we have to start doing is look at this at a landscape level as well and go beyond that … and look at how that we can reduce the wildfire hazard on the landscape as a whole.”
Gill said that will take a shift in forest management, reintroducing fire in a controlled manner and looking at reducing the densities of some of the forest.
“We seem to be getting these drier springs, and we have to do something in order to protect the infrastructure that has been built around the forest within the Okanagan,” Gill said.
“This is … one way of doing that. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control the topography … or anything associated with wind and precipitation but we can control the fuel. And that’s where we have to focus.”
Fire officials are reminding property owners that this is the time to start making their homes FireSmart-compliant, removing flammable debris that’s close to the property and opting for FireSmart plants.
“Look at what is combustible – what is touching your house that is going to burn look at the zero to 1.5 metres around your house,” Dennis Craig, from Kelowna Fire Department said.
BC Wildfire said that greeneries around the province are mindful of the needs of people and some plants are now deemed FireSmart, and they recommend they be the go-to when the time to start gardening gets underway.
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