Identifying fire risk areas and taking proactive steps to mitigate wildfire concerns makes up a fire season plan developed by District of Lake Country staff.
The Community Wildfire Protection Plan, presented to Lake Country council at Tuesday’s meeting, was first created in 2019 and recently updated with the assistance of consultants Davies Wildlife Management Inc.
Matt Vader, strategic and support services manager for the district, said the main focus of the updated report is to identify wildfire risk and outline mitigation strategies, most of which has been outlined through the province’s FireSmart program already.
“We can not get rid of wildfires, we can only do things to mitigate the risk,” Vader said.
“It’s a high-level plan, not necessarily mitigating on individual properties, but identifying the high risk areas, and education for the public.”
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Those identified high-risk areas include Nighthawk Road, Jack Seaton Park area, Apex Drive area, Lakehill Drive area, Forest Hills, Juniper Cove and Oyama Lake Road.
Nighthawk Road residents are familiar with the devastating impact of wildfires having seen a blaze race up the hillside from Okanagan Lake, burning eight homes and displacing hundreds of people in 2017.
Funding to deal with those concerns comes from two sources—the provincial Strategic Wildfire Prevention Initiative covered 75 per cent of eligible fire prevention activities to a maximum of $22,500; and the Community Resiliency Investment Program grant of $35,000 for Lake Country to hold a Wildfire Community Preparedness Day and fund ongoing efforts to promote FireSmart principles incorporated on private properties.
Some of the information highlights what material there should be have within 1.5 metres of a house, what material is best for building a house in a hazardous wildfire environment and landscaping steps that remove ground floor fire fuels.
Vader said that only one per cent of land in Lake Country is owned by the district, and so a big local focus is bringing FireSmart principles to the forefront of the private land owners.
“(Mitigation) has a huge impact on wildfire and how it functions,” said Vader.
“Lot’s of it is practical short-term things that can make a huge impact.”
“We work with the community towards FireSmart initiatives to identify risks and be proactive.”
The consultants did interface wildfire threat assessments on both Crown and municipal lands where the five behaviour modelling was classified as moderate or higher.
Those public land areas targeted for landscape and interface fuel breaks include Spion Kop hiking trails, Nighthawk Road, Jack Seaton Park, accounting for just over 141 hectares of land set aside for fire break purposes.
