Crews working in the forests near Pineview Valley to reduce the amount of fuel ahead of wildfire season (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

REDUCING WILDFIRE RISK

City of Kamloops wrapping up fuel management ahead of wildfire season

Mar 22, 2021 | 4:30 PM

KAMLOOPS — Before the wildfire season is even upon us, the City of Kamloops has been busy ensuring the amount of fuel on forest floors is reduced.

Crews are just wrapping up their work for the year, so the city and region is better prepared if we experience a busy fire season.

“Our main goal in reducing our wildland-urban interface fires is to keep any fire that does start on the ground,” said City of Kamloops natural resources crew leader Kirsten Wourms. “So any of the work that we’re doing, we’re not saying we’re eliminating fire risk, we’re just reducing that.”

From September until the end of March, City of Kamloops crews, as well as private contractors, are busy cutting down branches and clearing excess debris in anticipation of wildfire season.

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“To keep the fire on the ground, we want to not allow it to get up into the trees,” Wourms noted. “We talked a lot about ladder fuels, which is you’ve got a grassfire going and it hits these ladder fuels, which allows it to climb up into the tress. So by taking off the branches up to 10 feet, generally we won’t get those flames getting that high, so it can’t get up in the tree.”

However, it’s not only the professionals who play a role in reducing wildfire risk. Homeowners can do their part as well.

Jamie Chase, the fire and life safety educator with Kamloops Fire Rescue, says homeowners can clean up their property to remove certain risks. “Removing the combustibles up against the house, making sure there’s no flammable landscaping stuff like bark mulch and a lot of scrubs are actually quite combustible. Making sure those aren’t up close to the house,” he said.

Chase recommends cleaning up all fuels around your property, even those away from your house, but it doesn’t pose an extreme risk. It’s fuels close to the house you really need to pay attention to, even ones by the front door.

“Everyone knows the spots around their house when the wind blows, the leaves and all those things are accumulating — corners — and those are the exact same locations where if there is a fire with wind blowing sparks and embers, the embers are going to want to collect in that same spot,” warned Chase. “So there’s already a pile of fuel there, and if you haven’t gone through and cleaned those out, sparks are going to land in that big pile of leaves that have been left over, up the wall.”

Back in the forest, work by the city is all part of 190 sites that were identified in 2016 as ones that needed better fuel management.

“We have no ‘extreme’ areas left in the City of Kamloops. We have five ‘high’ areas that will be treated with the 2021 season,” said Wourms. “Then we’re just going to be down to ‘moderate’ and a lot of those areas, we’re going to be going through and every five to 15 years retreating them to make sure they fit our fuel management plan.”

To read the FireSmart Begins at Home manual, click here.