The City of Kimberley has made significant wildfire risk reduction progress in the wildland-urban interface southwest of the community.
In the summer of 2023, the city began its wildfire risk reduction project on 102 hectares of land thanks to funding from the Forest Enhancement Society of BC (FESBC).
“Kimberley has made wildfire mitigation a priority since 2006, maximizing grants to get as much work done as possible,” said Mayor Don McCormick.
“Efforts intensified in 2018 after the community was on evacuation alert for three weeks. As wildfire risk has increased, getting enough money to make a difference has been more difficult. The funding from FESBC allowed us to get more done with economies of scale, employ more people longer, and build capacity for future efforts.”
The area was identified as a 15 years ago as needing treatment.
Fire ecologist and scientist with the city Bob Gray said prescribed burns take a lot of funding and planning and more support is needed.
“Wildfire risk reduction is critical if we are going to have any hope of reducing the area burned and the negative consequences of fire,” noted Gray.
“The best form of wildfire mitigation is taking steps to reduce wildfire risk. It works, but it has to be scaled up.”
Gray was instrumental in the large planned burn near the airport in 2023, which ended up preventing a larger disaster.
“We all know there was a very horrible wildfire that ran through ʔaq̓am reserve. The burn we did in the springtime stopped it,” he added.
“Talking to BC Wildfire colleagues, they felt that it probably would have taken out the airport plus 80-100 homes and it could have made a run towards Marysville. If we lost the airport we would have lost not only the fueling base for the medium helicopters but also the tanker base. That would have meant cycle times from Castlegar which are over an hour and a half for air tankers and two hours for a helicopter.”
Mitigation work is not yet completed around Kimberley and is expected to be done by the winter.
Be the first to know! Don’t miss out on breaking news and daily updates in your area. Sign up to MyEastKootenayNow News Alerts.
