B.C. Premier David Eby looks out from a helicopter at Scotch Creek, B.C., while viewing areas of the Shuswap affected by the Bush Creek East wildfire on a helicopter flight from Kamloops to Salmon Arm, on Sept. 11.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
British Columbia Premier David Eby says the province is strongly considering adopting Australia’s practice of incorporating local volunteers into efforts to defend communities from wildfire, and that this will be a key issue for a new expert task force he has formed to find ways of improving his government’s responses to natural disasters.
Mr. Eby announced the panel and its core mandate Monday morning, hours before touring the Shuswap region, where more than 130 homes were destroyed by a mid-August wildfire.
Many structures in the area were saved by dozens of residents who defied evacuation orders to spend days fighting the fire with their own tools. Mr. Eby acknowledged that those concerned locals gained the respect of the BC Wildfire Service. Some were eventually integrated into official efforts to tame the blaze, known as the Bush Creek East Wildfire.
The new panel, he said, will be a mix of provincial bureaucrats and experts from industry and academia. The group, he added, will look across the Pacific to see how Australian governments work with residents keen to battle fires threatening their homes, a unique system of 140,000 volunteer firefighters that The Globe and Mail reported on earlier this year.
“The wildfire service, to their credit, actually incorporated community volunteers in some of their firefighting efforts,” Mr. Eby said, referencing the 17 people who volunteered to work alongside the professionals in Shuswap last month. “How do we formalize that? How do we learn from Australia’s example on this and provide additional resources, so that front-line wildfire service firefighters can have a bit more of a break and not burn out?”
Before the volunteers in Shuswap won the approval of the BC Wildfire Service, they faced official admonishment for ignoring orders as they worked to save their farms and businesses in the rural, mountainous region, roughly a five-hour drive northeast of Vancouver. Initially, wildfire officials said the residents who had remained were putting first responders at risk. Bowinn Ma, the provincial minister in charge of emergency response, said they were breaking the law.
“We’re trying to find a way that we can really find that balance of using those community assets, the volunteers, but also ensuring that the fire effort focuses on saving homes instead of rescuing people that stay behind,” Mr. Eby said.
More terrain has been torched in Canada this wildfire season than in any other season on record. B.C. has had to ask for hundreds of extra firefighters from across the country and around the world.
While many countries use volunteer “firies,” none depend on them as heavily as Australia, where frequent hot and dry conditions, vast forests and grasslands and highly flammable fuel types, such as eucalyptus trees, have made the country one of the most fire-prone regions in the world.
There, about 90 per cent of firefighters are unpaid. It’s an arrangement that dates back to the mid-1800s, when farmers and others living in rural communities self-organized to create firefighting services where there were none.
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In Canada, the majority of firefighters are volunteers, but wildland fire management falls largely under the jurisdiction of provincial and territorial agencies, which employ seasonal and full-time employees. After this summer’s widespread destruction, agencies across the country are exploring how they can bolster their wildfire response. They could look to Australia’s community-based volunteers for lessons.
They will need to navigate thorny issues, including liability, insurance and training – challenges Australia has grappled with over the past decade.
The BC Wildfire Service manages wildfires on both Crown and private lands. It employs a network of seasonal firefighters, permanent staff and contractors. On wildland-urban interface fires – where forests and brush meet homes and other structures made by humans – the provincial wildfire service might request assistance from local fire departments.
Climate change is now exacerbating B.C.’s fire seasons. And it is currently worsening the most extreme drought in B.C.’s recorded history, a land-parching dry spell that is increasing the future risk of landslides and floods. At least 400 properties in the province have been lost to wildfires this year, thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes and two young firefighters have died on duty.
Mr. Eby said Monday that the new task force will also discuss emergency response with the federal government. Federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan said last week that Ottawa is contemplating a national force to battle wildfires, to shore up provincial resources battered by this year’s blazes.
Mr. Eby added that the task force will advise on volunteer recruitment, work with First Nations and front-line workers and provide ways to make support for evacuees more accessible, with special attention to speeding up emergency funding and accommodation.
With a report from The Canadian Press