How Kelowna, B.C., is preparing for the upcoming wildfire season

It may be April, but the BC Wildfire Service is reminding you that category two and three open burning is banned already in some parts of the province. The prohibition is in place across the Prince George Fire Center and Caribou Fire Center regions and part of the northwest parts of the Northwest Fire Center. Last week, crews responded to incidents caused by bot pile burns or burning forest debris. The service warrants against lighting new ones and making sure existing birds are completely extinguished. This week we’re taking a look at how different parts of our province are preparing for the wildfire season. Last year, blazes in Kelowna forced people from their homes, destroyed plant and animal life and left local to fire departments exhausted. Dennis Craig is the Assistant Chief of Wildfire Mitigation and Prevention for the Kelowna Fire Department. Chief, thanks for joining us. First of all, how is the city preparing for this wildfire season? Well, this year we’re really focusing on directing a lot of our mitigation efforts and parts of our activities towards private properties and homeowners. We’ve that’s what we’ve dedicated everything towards. We’re we’re putting a bit of a pause on our mitigation efforts on public lands just to really focus our funding and and efforts and on to the private properties and and when you speak with people in and around Kelowna how concerned are they and what reaction do they have when when when you’re there telling them about what they can do to to prevent fires. Well we’re we’re overwhelmed with requests from the public. You know, the interest in the Fire Smart program has never been greater. Obviously it’s very fully so from last year’s season that we’ve had many residents are very nervous, so really trying to get that message out. We’re delivering a hard message this year. You know, we got to change behaviors and that’s the message that we’re getting out is it’s it’s time to really look at your own properties and then start changing your behaviors and and expectations. When you say you’re overwhelmed by the demand for for Firespart, what are we talking about? How does it compare to years past just, you know, tenfold the number of requests. You know, you know, people that weren’t thinking about it before are thinking about it now. You know, last summer we had embers landing in downtown Kelowna. Everybody viewed Fire, Smart and wildfire as more of a intermix or interface sort of scenario where if you lived in a downtown urban area, you didn’t really think of it as hard or as much. And you know, seeing embers drop right into our downtown core has now a lot of people more aware and and thinking about it. Based on what you’ve seen from the preparation already going on with people wanting to get involved in Fire Smart, how much time do you have and do they have in order to be ready before the serious heat and the serious dangers of wildfires begin again? Well, you know, Fire Smart is not something you’re going to, you know, complete in a afternoon or a weekend. It’s it’s several, it’s many little things that you can do over time. So it’s if it’s really not about time and how quickly you can do it, it’s you’ve got to start now and and pick the highest priority items and work. Just keep working at it and it’s going to be continuous. It’s yard maintenance ongoing. Can you give us some examples of things that people ought to be doing now? Well, fire smart is a roof down, walls out approach. So you know rather than looking at your neighbour’s yard or looking at the the park behind your your house or across the street, you have to start looking at your own house and structure as the beginning. So you’re looking at what’s going to ignite your home that’s touching your home. Direct flame contact is what burns down homes. So obviously those you know 20 foot tall Cedars that are right touching your house or that cedar hedge that’s right into your softening, you know that’s that’s step number one we we got to get rid of that combustible material that’s touching your house. And lastly Chief, we appreciate your time. What’s what do you make of the of the BC government’s investment in mitigation as you’re doing versus the idea around suppression of fires. You know Chief Roland said it best last year. You know we are spending a lot on suppression and rightly we have to, but we need to start looking and investing more in mitigation because as you see this year with City of Kelowna, you know we’re grant, we’re using our grant funds and we have to make a choice. Are we going to do mitigation or are we going to you know focus on fire smart activities. Unfortunately, we’re not able to do to do both at the same time just given the the limited funds. Dennis Craig, the Kelowna Fire Assistant Chief for Wildfire Mitigation and Prevention. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me.