Catherine Lloyd knows the power of nature when she looks off into the forest from her idyllic North Vancouver backyard.
Just metres from her back fence, a burnt cedar tree stump serves as a daily reminder of how perilously close residents are to a whole lot of trouble if a fire starts up in the woods surrounding their subdivision nestled into the lower slopes of Mount Seymour.
Two other blackened tree stumps are farther up the slope, all destroyed in past lightning strikes that were quickly contained by the District of North Vancouver’s firefighters.
“You can see some of the trees have been hit by lightning,” said Lloyd, 67, who moved into her Blueridge home in 1983. "That scares you."
But these days, Lloyd, 67, and her neighbours along their well-manicured Hyannis Drive road have a bigger fear as their beloved forest takes a beating from the unprecedented dry and hot conditions all spring long.
They want to stress to trail users of the popular mountain to watch what they do with their cigarette butts.
“Tell them to stop smoking while on the trails,” said Lloyd emphatically. “It is a tinderbox back here right now.
“It would be a nightmare if a fire moved in,” she adds.
“It is a terrible thing to think about a fire happening here.”
Like her neighbours, Lloyd moved to the area because of the trees and a backyard looking out onto heavily wooded parkland. “This is such a lovely place to live,” she said. “You love it because of the trees.”
Lloyd’s neighbour Bev Craig also worries about cigarette butts being tossed to the ground. “Don’t throw you cigarette butts out,” she warns. “It is so dry back there.”
In 2013, the District of North Vancouver began clearing the dense swath of trees and lush vegetation behind the upscale Hyannis Drive roadway as part of a comprehensive wildfire plan that identified 70 hectares of at-risk land.
Fiona Dercole, North Vancouver’s manager of public safety, said following the report in 2007, the district secured provincial funding to begin cutting down those heavily wooded areas to provide both a better fire guard and significantly reduce the amount of fuel on the ground if a fire did move into the area.
It costs about $30,000 a hectare to do the clearing. Dercole says they have cleared 42 hectares so far. The tall trees and brush on the forest floor have been cleared outside of the annual bird nesting season.
“We are thinning out the forest,” she said of the mitigation work. “It is quite stark when you’re used to lush, dark forest. But people like it. It is getting light into their backyards.”
While they are doing the tree and brush clearing, she said they are also removing any invasive species.
“Once the fire gets up in the canopy it is very dangerous because it travels from tree to tree to tree,” she said of the need to clear and thin out the area.
Dercole said officials know that warm and dry conditions are putting a lot of stress on the forest, and it needs to be monitored closely. “We are overdue for one,” she said of a big fire on the North Shore. “There is a lot of fuel built up in the understory and we have to do a better job of identifying the fuel risk,” she said.
The district has also been working with home builders to get them to avoid using flammable materials such as cedar shakes. “We want them to use fire-resistant roofing and siding, “ said Dercole. “Don’t put a cedar-shake roof on the house when you live in a wildfire interface zone,” she adds.
The district cleared eight hectares in the Grousewoods Park area in 2008, Roche Point Park then had six hectares cleared and in 2013 the Hyannis park area had eight hectares cleaned up.
In West Vancouver, assistant fire chief Jeff Bush said firefighters are bracing for a busy summer with the hot and dry conditions.
Between June to September last year, West Vancouver had 28 fires, with 27 of them believed to be from cigarette butts.
“We have a considerable amount of urban interface and we are saying to people be very watchful,” Bush said of the elevated fire risk as Metro Vancouver gets baked with more hot weather. “Interface fires are a concern because of the amount of development in the upper portion of our municipality,” he said.
Bush said fire officials will have an active public awareness campaign going into the summer months to remind drivers not to throw cigarette butts out the window, and for trail users to be mindful of the dry conditions and avoid smoking or building fires.
As part of their fire-prevention work, Bush said it is critical to let people know they need to immediately report any fire.
Bush said last summer they were run off their feet with fires. “It was a busy year for us,” he said.
"Fortunately we have been very lucky."
Despite thoughts turning to shutting down the extensive trail system when the fire risk gets high, Bush said officials prefer to keep the forests open. “The people who frequent the trails, we rely on them as our eyes and ears,” he said.
“We have been taking the threat seriously for years,” Dorit Mason, director of the North Shore Emergency Management Office, said of the wildfire risk on the North Shore. “It is quite a concern to us. I worry about it getting hotter and drier.”
Mason said everyone involved in emergency preparedness has seen the dramatic footage of people fleeing Fort McMurray when the wildfire recently moved into the Alberta city. She said that serves as a stark reminder of a fire can get out of control. “Everyone needs to understand it can happen so quickly,” she said. “The discarded cigarettes can have devastating consequences.”
Next week, Mason's office plans a wildfire response exercise, and she said they are continually working with the other emergency responders across the North Shore to streamline the protocol if an emergency like a major wildfire crops up. “We have worked over the last four years establishing how the protocol would happen if there is a fire,” she said.”Every year we confirm the protocol is still in place and have annual get-togethers.”
She is also a firm believer in keeping the trails and parks open under high fire risk advisories. “Last summer there was a decision not to close the parks and that we needed public out there catching anything that started,” she said.
And if a wildfire results in people having to evacuate their homes, she said residents need to be prepared. “People need to be personally prepared. You need a grab and go bag with supplies ready. When you are told to leave you need to leave. By not leaving it can put our responders at risk.
If a wildfire develops, ground crews and air support can be brought in quickly through the provincial Coastal Fire Centre.“If they need help they ask,” said fire information officer Donna MacPherson, of the role the Coastal Fire Centre plays. “Usually the conversation happens fairly quickly,” she said. “It is a strong team effort. We have strong connections with the local fire departments and do a lot of exercises with them."
Bob Cavill, watershed manager for Metro Vancouver, said fire prevention is a huge part of the regional district's work during the summer months. And while people are not allowed into the North Shore and Coquitlam watersheds, Cavill said they keep close watch over the 60,000 hectares of land closed off to protect the water supply.
"It doesn't take too many warm days in a row to go from one fire rating to another," he notes. Metro Vancouver posts the fire hazard for trail users. Cavill said in the upcoming days the fire risk could be considerable. He is optimistic that rain will hit the region in June. "Typically we can count on the June rain," he said.
But in the short term, he said the fire rating will remain a concern.
"By this week some of our stations could have a high fire rating," he said. "People need to be very respectful and understand the power of a wildfire."