Fire Safety Considerations
F
rom the intense heat dome in June to the hundreds of wildfires that continue to burn out of control across much of the southern half of British Columbia, the province has been hard hit by the tragic impacts of climate change this summer. While wildfires are nothing new for B.C., the frequency and severity of fires are increasing. And it’s only going to get worse — most communities that are threatened by wildfires are in regions whose burn areas are projected to increase by 50-200% due to climate change, according to the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. For municipalities, risk management must include climate risk management. And in B.C., that means taking steps to protect residents from wildfires. By increasing the number of natural infrastructure assets, implementing climate mitigation tools, investing in research and promoting education and awareness, municipalities can begin to build resiliency. According to FireSmart Canada, there are many steps a municipality can take, from easy and inexpensive actions to more complex projects: NATURAL INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS Deploying landscape and vegetation management techniques to create a community fire guard such as:
PRIORITY EQUIPMENT AND SYSTEMS NEEDS Educating and offering incentives or subsidies to homeowners, businesses and vulnerable community members to install equipment such as:
• Planting fire-resistant trees and drought-tolerant plants
• fire-retardant roofing
• Creating fuel-reduced buffer zones
• non-combustible screens and safeguards
• Clearing vegetation to create firebreaks
• Improving access to dependable water supply such as portable wildfire pumps and water tanks
• Digging trenches to create fuel breaks • Implementing native or traditional fire management activities such as cultural burns
• fire-resistant siding
• Securing fire suppression and on-site firefighting equipment such as firefighting gear, hoses and nozzles, sprinkler systems • Securing propane relocation equipment
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