Changes need to be made to protect the community.
This is the opinion of Bruce Blackwell an independent forester and biologist who came to Burns Lake last week to discuss wildfire mitigation.
Local resident Bob Murray and Rob Krause, forest protection officer for the Nadina fire zone also spoke to the many concerned local residents, contractors, municipal representatives, and forest industry workers, during the meeting. Ministry of Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations representatives were not in attendance during the afternoon meeting despite being invited to attend.
Blackwell said that Burns Lake could potentially be looking at the possibility of the town going up in flames, similar to the situation in Slave Lake, Alberta, due to the increasing wildfire hazard caused by large amounts of dead pine left in the forest.
“The fuel loading is increasing every day and new strategies need to be put into place to protect the community,” he said.
Murray added that putting new strategies into place will also protect the short, mid and long term fibre supply in the Lakes Timber Supply area from the devastation caused by wildfires.
Once dead pine moves to the ground, the risk of severe wildfires increases.
“To make a fire you need three things …. heat, oxygen and fuel,” Blackwell said.
“We are 10 -12 years into the pine beetle problem, but it will take about 20 years for the majority dead material to hit the ground.”
“The dead pine is pre-dried, there is no moisture in it. It is like kiln dried wood and the longer the dead pine is left [in the forest] the more risk there is.”
Blackwell also said that changes need to be made to the current fire prediction models. “This new fuel type is not anything that anyone has researched before, so the current prediction models no longer work. The predicted rates of spread are way off.”
He used last year’s fire at Greer Creek near Vanderhoof as an example saying the rate of spread for the fire was double what the prediction rates were.
“The current predictors may not reflect the true conditions ….. look at Greer Creek, nobody thought the conditions were that bad.” The fire at Greer Creek doubled in size in 24 hours, over 100 firefighters were sent to battle the blaze that grew to be 6,102 hectare fire.
“The intensity of the fires is greater and they spot [new fires created from blowing embers] faster,”
“This is without all of the fuel [dead pine] on the ground, the problem is going to get worse.”
According to Blackwell, all areas in B.C. where there has been a pine problem are heading down the same trajectory.
Fire breaks now need to be doubled or tripled in size due to spotting. Flying embers are particularly dangerous for fire crews working to control a fire as new fires can quickly start behind them, trapping them in between two fires.
“Fire control has diminished, the ability to control a fire at the initial attack stage is compromised,”
“This is the bad news …. now what do we do about it,” Blackwell said. Increasing the numbers of initial attack crews, prioritizing areas and creating a new wildfire risk management system as well as amending the Wildfire Act to reflect the heightened risk are some of the suggestions Blackwell gave.
He also said that additional research needs to be undertaken to better understand the dead pine problem.
“We also need to remove the fuel [dead pine] from the forest. We can’t control the heat or the intensity, but we can control the ignition, it is the only thing we have at our disposal.”
According to Blackwell it is a 1.7 million hectare problem that spans almost the entire province.
“We must focus on protecting the remaining timber supply,”
Krause provided an overview on the 2011 fire season in the Nadina zone and said it was the driest season in 30 years.
“We had 70 days of extreme to high fire danger ….. there were 1,600 fires in the province and we were not all that busy until July and August. For five weeks we were slammed,” Krause said.
He said the wildfires cost taxpayers a total of $213 million in direct fire fighting costs last year.
“That’s huge for taxpayers.”
Of the 96 fires in the Nadina zone last year, 52 were caused by lightning, 27 were human caused, 14 were nuisance fires from abandoned campfires and four fires were within the Village of Burns Lake.
“Thirteen abandoned campfires is the highest ever in the zone. We may have found them because we had a lot more patrols last year, but this proves that it is a bigger issue than we thought, so we will be having a lot more patrols this year,” Krause said.
He went on to report a 92 per cent success rate for fire control last year, with six initial attack failures.
“Binta Lake and Francois Lake fires were colossal failures,” he said, adding that he still hears that they didn’t fight the Binta fire. “We did …. we sent crews at 10 a.m. when air patrol found the fire and we put air tankers on it … in my opinion we did the right thing.”
Environment Canada are predicting the weather to be cooler and wetter than normal this May and average for June. In July things are predicted to heat. During August and September Environment Canada predicts that most of the province will be well above average temperatures.
