With the province on high alert this wildfire season, we speak to an expert about risk factors for Vancouver Island municipalities and prevention and preparation.
With the province on high alert this wildfire season, we speak to an expert about risk factors for Vancouver Island municipalities and prevention and preparation.
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Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jackie: Hi, my name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Tuesday, July 13. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. Today on the show, wildfire risks are high, and with the devastating consequences they can have on display in Lytton, we look at the risk levels of municipalities in the CRD and if there's more that can be done to avoid disaster. Wildfires are a part of life in British Columbia. But climate change has continued to drive up the risk level in the province. This summer will be one without campfires as a result of the hot, dry weather, and we were reminded about the devastating potential of wildfires in the tragedy of Lytton. So to learn more about the risk on the island and what can be done to prevent and prepare for fires, we're joined by Jonathan Reimer, the manager of Electoral Area Fire and Emergency Programs at the Capital Regional District. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining the podcast.
Jonathan: Thanks, Jackie.
Jackie: First, is there a similar risk for wildfires across the province?
Jonathan: No, I think it's fairly safe to say that it's heterogeneous. Our area is interesting in that we have a mix of both. We have some areas that are up into the high end of moderate or already high fire hazards and some areas that don't have the same type of fire risk. But we have some areas of the province that are high or have extreme values for wildfire hazard and other areas far less.
Jackie: What are some of the risk factors?
Jonathan: A number of them. So starting at the beginning, you have to have a fire ignition. So something has to start that fire, whether that's lightning or humans. And then from there on, it's the vegetation, the fuel that kind of governs what type of fire behaviour you're going to be able to see. And lastly, is that fire weather. So us here, most of our weather is really dominated by the ocean by that marine environment. So temperature, humidity, rainfall, those types of things, even your wind, that's going to define what sort of our behaviour we're going to see from any fire.
Jackie: And in the southern Island area, where are some of the riskier areas?
Jonathan: Generally, you're going to see higher risk values anywhere you're a little bit inland. So you're that marine influence is slightly lower, and you see denser pockets of wildlands, so that deeper, denser forests. And so, if you want to see a map, there's something called provincial strategic threat analysis. But generally, the story is that some of those areas through the Malahat through Langford, heading through East Sooke, some of Sooke itself, and then over daughter point, that's where you're going to see some of the higher values of fire risk. And you also have pockets where it becomes very dry up on the north peninsula and onto our islands, including Saltspring Island and others.
Jackie: When it comes to actually starting wildfires. I know that a majority of them, for the most part for most years, start via lightning strikes. But there are also human risks as well. Are those things that can be easily avoided?
Jonathan: In theory, we say that all human-caused ignitions are avoidable. So all human-caused fires are avoidable, and you're correct in our area. Generally, we see 60% provincewide of our fires started by lightning, which is true of this year as well. But here locally, we see 90% of our fires start from humans. Some of that is a good news story of lightning being less common here, but as well, we're seeing humans in the forest, doing things they shouldn't be, sometimes they know that they shouldn't be doing that and other times they're accidental. We know we don't kill ourselves. We're probably not going to be able to exclude fire and totally human-caused wildfire. But we can do a lot through some education and some enforcement in terms of reducing our fire risk here on the South Island.
Jackie: And we know that wildfires can have terrible impacts when they get into towns, and we saw the devastation in Lytton. Are there any ways that we can reduce risk to towns and town centres?
Jonathan: There's a lot. Yes, you're right. What a historic week and week and a half. In terms of both the ongoing drought, we have some of the extreme heat values that we've seen locally, not just here in the South Island, but certainly felt here. And then the wildfire situation this year, quite out of the normal, and I know we keep talking about this idea of a new normal, and that might be even generous. Certainly, the situation has not seemed to stabilize in any way. But in terms of what we can do a lot, there's a lot that we can do personally, at our own homes and our own family. And there's a lot that local governments can do to understand and mitigate their risk. And so early on before that wildfire even ever starts, we should be planning our communities in such a way that they are fire resilient, whether that's through that wildland-urban interface area, any place where you have a good mix of homes, and you have a good mix of wildlands of forests, fuels. That's an area that potentially has some challenges in terms of wildfire for people living there, and they need to be aware of that. Different jurisdictions have different open-burning red regulations. And a lot of the core, say in South Island, there's no fire at all, some areas allow fire with certain rate restrictions. And then we want to make sure that we're people are following understanding and that we're enforcing our regulations. We want well-trained, well-resourced fire departments; there are things you can do in terms of changing the fuels on the ground. And there are a few ways you can do that. Usually, we see thinning and brushing with us mechanically or some other system of changing the vegetation so that if it does burn, it's going to burn at a far lower intensity. And that's a big part of the puzzle piece for lowering our risk locally here. And then also making sure that all of our areas have really good emergency planning so that we have emergency operation centers that understand how about evacuation is going to go and we have a public that understands what fire is going to look like in there and how they can be evacuated if they need to on short notice.
Jackie: You mentioned fuel, and I know that a lot of people are thinking about the dense forest areas. How strong is the fuel of a dense neighbourhood?
Jonathan: That's a very good question. And so when we look at some of these larger disasters, like Lytton or like Fort MacMurray, what we generally see is a wildfire that starts in the wildlands area, and then it transitions into the built-up area and transitions into fuels that are man-made. And once it does transition into that, those man-made fuels are very difficult to stop because you'll see multiple, simultaneous ignitions, and you're seeing homes, igniting nearby homes that at Ignite nearby homes. And once you reach that point, it is challenging to stop. So what we try and focus on is that transition from wildland fuels to the homes once the critical mass of homes is on fire. It's very difficult for responders to respond simply because there are so many of them effectively.
Jackie: Are we planning a worst-case scenario in most municipalities?
Jonathan: I would say yes, we are planning, but we need to do more. And we're really understanding the aftermath of these disasters better each year. Unfortunately, we're learning a lot of these lessons the hard way. But we saw communities devastated during 2017 and 2018 in British Columbia. And those communities are still recovering from the impacts of those long-term evacuations from hundreds and sometimes 1000s of people losing their homes. If we here in the Capital Region in the South Island are certainly aware of that, and we are planning for recovery, and recovery means so many different things. It's not as easy as getting people's insurance sorted out and rebuilding homes. It's rebuilding social fabric and rebuilding economic fabric in a way that honestly lasts decades. But the sooner we start, the better we are. And I can say I'm happy with the progress we're making at this time.
Jackie: We seem to hear more about wildfires and the increasing risk because of climate change. How has climate change impacted British Columbia's susceptibility to these natural disasters?
Jonathan: That's a great question. And I want to make sure that everybody is clear that climate change, of course, is happening. It's happening in our area, making our wildfire situation much riskier and a lot more hazardous. And we're entering into an area that we don't have any records for. And we're not sure where we're going to end up; what we're seeing is a longer fire season. So that up high in our alpine areas that normally carry snow over the winter, that snowfall is not lasting nearly as long as it used to, we're extending that rain-free period, both in the spring and into the fall, which means that the forests are drier for longer. We're also seeing an increase in lightning just slightly in our area, but it's happening. And that means that we're seeing more fires start. And when those fires start, they're burning more hectares. So on almost every measure, our fire risk is increasing. And of all the factors affecting our risk. I think climate change is the one that we have our eye on the most.
Jackie: I did look at some of the wildfire averages for the past ten or so years on the government website. And I noticed that it was a terrible year in 2018. But then wildfires significantly decreased in 2019 and 2020. What would you make of that?
Jonathan: And just like the climate, you're going to have a hot year, you're going to have a wet year, you're going to have all sorts of variation from year to year. But the trend is what you really want to look at. And so, when you look at that trend, we had a fair bit of fire on our landscapes. We go back historically, back through the 1910s, back to the 1920s. And that trend just slowly decreases over time. And tell about the late 90s in 2000, when fire makes its presence known on landscapes again, and you're seeing an increase in the number of fires and the amount of area burned by those fires, and as well of community impacts the amount of evacuations, both in terms of people and houses. That seems to be, on average, going up every year. And so yeah, last year, for example, was historically quite a year. And this year, we don't have any figures for we're still in early July. But certainly, we're seeing more impacts this year than last year. We did break the record in 2017 for hectares burnt, and then we broke that same record again the next year in 2018. It's too early to say how it will fare this year, but certainly, all of the agencies are fully involved in supporting and responding to wildfire right now.
Jackie: So would you say that the trend is showing that we still are seeing a worrying increase?
Jonathan: Definitely.
Jackie: And the government this year took some pretty stark actions when they decided to ban campfires until October. And I think that a lot of people are thinking, "Wow, it's a campfire-less summer." Is that something that maybe we might be getting used to?
Jonathan: I can't speak for what the wildfire services are thinking about this particular ban. However, what I can interpret from the messaging we heard from them is that they are busy enough with the fires that we can't prevent. So that 60% of fires in British Columbia that are started by lightning bolts are keeping crews busy full-time. And there's just no room or time to manage the fires that are human costs and are preventable. And so they're trying to get ahead of that by banning campfires by banning fire use across the province. And I'm actually encouraged by that because they do have one more level that they can pull from the wildfire service in terms of reducing emissions, and that is to ban all access to the backcountry. So that is basically keeping folks out of areas where they could start fires. And that is a real last resort. We've only seen that to my knowledge twice in the last 20 years, 2003 and then 2017. And that's something we want to avoid. And so, in the interim, banning campfires, I think I welcome that as a common-sense approach to reducing human costs of ignitions.
Jackie: As with climate change, the economic impact of dealing with these things has started to outweigh the economic impact of preventing these things. Do you think that we're going to start seeing this shift to massive funding for preventative measures?
Jonathan: That is a good observation that wildfire impacts a lot of us used to measure them in terms of how much are we spending for that helicopter? Or how many crews did we have to bring in? And how much did that cost us? But the impacts of wildfire, both economically and socially, are just immense in terms of businesses, tourism, deferred vacations, and all sorts of economic activity that you wouldn't necessarily expect at first glance. And so, when we look at the wildfire picture, prevention seems to be pretty good value. And I think we have seen in the last few years, some provincial initiatives that I think they get it in terms of front-loading some of those expenses for longer-term gains. It's always very difficult in government because you're going to have to spend quite a lot, perhaps many millions of dollars at the front end, and you might not see any change in the level of fire situation for five years or ten years or even longer. But investing in that long-term ecosystem and society's resilience. I don't think we have an option not to do that anymore.
Jackie: Could there be a situation in the future where the risk becomes so high that certain places in the province will become unlivable despite any prevention methods?
Jonathan: I think the answer is probably no. We see far increased fire danger in some of our areas, in some areas that are habitat across the globe. So if we look at parts of the Southern United States or Australia, they live with what we call a wildfire of return intervals. So if you stick a pin in the ground, how often is that area going to burn? There are parts of southern California or of Australia where you can measure that as about, perhaps three or four years, you're going to see a fire return interval, in BC, we don't really see that types of fire danger, we are seeing higher intensity fires, that's a little bit of a different question. But I think it's not so much if the area is habitable. However, do we have to change the way that we live with wildfires? So if you want to live in a cabin, in the woods, say, on the two golden plateaus, you're not going to be able to live in an area with a cedar roof, where you have the trees coming down and touching your home. It's very romantic, but it's just not practical because firefighters aren't going to be able to save that home. And that fire, fire is going to impact your home every decade, perhaps even more. So what I think is going to happen is we're going to get used to managing the area around our home, managing what we call fire smart ignition zones, out about 30 meters, so we're going to have to manage our landscapes we're going to have to manage are the materials that we build our house with. And so that means thinking about fire when we're designing our lifestyle in a way that we're not used to doing.
Jackie: You have mentioned a couple of times living with wildfires, which is something that we do in BC. Do you think that more people should be focused on being prepared for the situation where a wildfire impacts them?
Jonathan: That's exactly correct, Jackie, I think we have gotten used to this idea that the fire department is going to show up and make everything okay, and we're not going to be able to have to think about wildfire flame or wildfire smoke in our area. And we're seeing that's not true. Wildfires were here before we were in British Columbia, and they will be hereafter. In the interim, we have to learn to live with it. We have to learn to live with that smoke, and we have to learn to live with that fire. And that means planning things a little bit differently. Maybe that means taking vacations at a certain time. Maybe that means planning how we build our communities and how we build our homes. And it certainly means making sure that our homes and our family are ready in case wildfire comes knocking at our door.
Jackie: Jonathan, thank you so much for your time.
Jonathan: Thank you.