Though it’s been a relatively slow start to the wildfire season on Vancouver Island, local fire departments are keeping a close eye on wooded areas that border their communities.
On Friday, the only wildfire on the Island was a .75-hectare blaze in the gully at Rogers Creek in Port Alberni that was listed as “being held,” while a small fire west of Duncan was brought under control on Thursday.
The Port Alberni fire was behind the Alberni-Clayoquot branch of the SPCA, which was not affected.
Coastal Fire Centre information officer Gordon Robinson said there’s no guarantee things will stay quiet — in 2022, a slow-starting fire season quickly became active for much of the summer.
In Langford, Fire Chief Chris Aubrey said “interface” fires — wildfires that could potentially spread to urban land — are a serious worry for his department.
“Langford is surrounded by forests,” Aubrey said. “We’ve got the watershed, we’ve got Goldstream Provincial Park and we have got Thetis Lake Park, so three of four sides of Langford are right up to the forest.
“Obviously that’s a great concern to us.”
The most significant interface fire in recent years was at Mill Hill Regional Park in 2020. Amid windy conditions, the fire, which was believed to be human-caused, reached two hectares in size.
Fire crews from View Royal, Colwood, Esquimalt and the B.C. Wildfire Service assisted their Langford counterparts in putting the fire out.
Langford Fire Rescue has received a $400,000 provincial fire-safety grant that it will use for things like community events and keeping a staff member in place to run a FireSmart program, educating residents about how to reduce risks of a wildfire spreading to homes.
Aubrey said FireSmart measures include such basics as keeping lawns cut, removing combustible material from under decks, cleaning gutters and having firewood at least 10 metres from outside walls.
“We’ll really be focusing in the next two years on public education, working with individual homeowners to do home assessments,” Aubrey said.
There could be added attention to neighbourhoods considered “higher risk” due to their proximity to trees and brush, he said.
Other communities are also taking fire-prevention steps, including Sooke, which held a public event this month focused on FireSmart strategies.
Last June, the Central Saanich and North Saanich fire departments participated in a wildfire-training exercise — including a simulated evacuation — around homes near John Dean Provincial Park.
Sidney/North Saanich RCMP and a search-and-rescue team from the Peninsula Emergency Measures Organization also took part.
Aubrey said there can be some complacency about wildfires on the Island because the most serious ones tend to happen elsewhere in the province.
“We see the big wildfires in the Interior but we never see them here.”
Last year’s wildfire season was the most damaging in B.C.’s history, with over 2.84 million hectares burned, at least 33,000 people having to evacuate their homes and about 400 homes destroyed.
• For more details on fire prevention, go to firesmartbc.ca.
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