First responders train for interface fires in the South Okanagan

With fire season approaching in the South Okanagan, fire crews began preparing for it by training to deal with interface fires.

The training took place in the area of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory on Saturday and it was the second of its kind.

“We’re gathering a bunch of local volunteer fire departments together to practise our preset plans to work on our communications, work on our deployment, and test drive our plan to make sure it works in a real event,” said Dennis Smith, Naramata fire chief.

Interface fires happen when a wildfire poses a threat to structures and nearby communities and to train for that, crews created mock scenarios.

“We had the fire on the roadside, which is not uncommon in the Southern Interior and moving toward the community of St. Andrews,” said Beau Michaud, Penticton Fire Zone BC Wildfire technician.

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“My role today was to focus on how long it would take the fire going from the point of origin to the structures and some of the tactical things the fire department can do to protect those structures.”

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According to fire officials, interface fires are becoming more common year over year, especially with the population increasing in the south.

“I think you can see last year with the Keremeos Creek fire and the year before the Nk’Mip, previously Christie Mountain, the local interface fires are becoming more frequent so that means our training needs to become more frequent,” said Leslie Roos, Kaleden assistant fire chief.

With interface fires being such a complex callout, multiple agencies are typically involved, including the RCMP, BC Ambulance, BC Wildfire and the fire department. All of those agencies took part in Saturday’s training to practise response times, communications and how to deal with a real-life situation.

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“RCMP come along to help us with closing roads, keeping the public away from the hazard as well as the possible evacuation of a local community,” said Roos.

“And we have BC Ambulance, so (Saturday) we had what we call an incident within, an incident where we are working the fire and perhaps the firefighter has become injured and BC Ambulance are here to support us in that.”

Crews are planing to continue the event next year and expand it to more participants and other agencies.