File Photo (Image Credit: Asaja Nielsen)

By James Peters

FireSmart

City of Kamloops to hire full-time FireSmart coordinator

Jan 9, 2024 | 4:39 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops council has created a new staff position for a FireSmart coordinator.

The FireSmart program is touted to help “increase neighborhood resilience to wildfire and minimize its negative impacts.”

The District of Logan Lake spent nearly two decades implementing FireSmart principles, and its citizens credit them for helping save the community from the Tremont Creek wildfire in 2021.

Emergency Preparedness Manager Will Beatty told council many of the program’s components are now looked after by Kamloops Fire Rescue personnel in addition to their regular duties.

“Some of the roles and responsibilities that a position like this will hold will be to work, manage and align the FireSmart activities, actions and grants with all City of Kamloops departments… align the FireSmart principles across the city to achieve FireSmart Community status and to implement plans and best practices for the program,” said Beatty.

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He noted this position, or one similar, is required by the province for the City of Kamloops to be eligible to receive funding through the Community Resiliency Investment program.

Councillor Stephen Karpuk was one of several councillors who voiced full support for the new position.

“Our public are waking up to the idea that we need, as a collective whole, to be coming on board,” said Karpuk. “People who have been trimming their cedars in parts of our community and dumping them on the backside of their cedar fence in the green space, thinking they would decompose, have just lit a fuse cord.”

The position will be funded through reserves in 2024 and taxation in 2025 and beyond.