While there was no rain in sight at 10 Mile Lake during the evening of Aug. 4, water was still falling from the sky.
The 10 Mile Lake Volunteer Fire Department was testing and demonstrating the potential of their structure protection supplies.
“We’re showcasing two things, our ability to protect a structure, and the advantage if a home owner already has their own stuff up,” 10 Mile Lake Fire Department member Seth Shelley said. “It saves our resources. We have a finite amount of resources.”
READ MORE: Williams Lake structure protection unit deployed to Young Lake wildfire
A single pump was able to push water to enough sprinklers to protect 11 properties. Included in the demonstration was running fellow member Burt Sturt’s personal Wasp protection system.
“We’ve been trying to get the community on board to get Wasp’s for their own houses, because we’re a structure firefighting outfit, we’re not forestry,” Sturt said. “If people have their own sprinklers, they can set that up on their own.”
Sturt said a town-wide program in Green Lake saved all properties around the lake from destruction from a wildfire.
“If you look around, there’s an awful lot of burnable material,” he said, pointing to the 10 Mile Lake Provincial Park at the end of the road. “Just a lot of it. The more we can be prepared for it, the better off we can be.”
Shelley worked fighting forest fires in Alberta for five years, and said sprinkler systems can make all the difference.
“A lot of people think ‘I wouldn’t buy two sprinklers, what’s that going to do?’ but when you actually see how much it does in a short window of time, in 15 minutes I can drench my whole house,” he said.
For more information on the Wasp fire protection system, residents are encouraged to talk with the 10 Mile Fire Department.
READ MORE: $40K in wildfire suppression equipment stolen from Kootenay crews
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