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RDCK steps up rural FireSmart assessments

Fire specialists have visited 350 properties this year
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Andrew Doran, one of the RDCK’s FireSmart assessors, uses an app that provides for a consistent format for every assessment and allows homeowners to receive comprehensive work plans to mitigate hazards for home ignition. Photo: Regional District of Central Kootenay

Third in a series on local preparations for wildfires

Jim Kyle says all that stuff on your deck could ignite your house in the event of a wildfire.

“Remove things on your deck that are highly flammable — foam cushions on furniture, for example,” he says. “If you are evacuated and don’t take those things inside, they can ignite your house. And move materials from storage around the side of your house, like extra firewood around your house. Move it away.”

Kyle is a wildfire mitigation specialist for the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK). He is one of a team of eight assessors. They have spent the summer visiting homes of rural landowners, helping them make their properties more fire resistant.

The RDCK has had a hard time over the past few years getting the attention of rural landowners about the need to reduce wildfire fuel on their properties. But that’s starting to change.

Especially this past summer, when the intense smoke added an apocalyptic tension to the fire season, people are getting the message, Kyle says. The RDCK has done 350 FireSmart assessments on rural properties this year so far.

Kyle gives landowners a comprehensive one-to-four-hour assessment and written report, then returns to give them a FireSmart certificate if they follow through on his recommendations.

In the wildland/urban interface, where combustible forest fuels are found adjacent to homes, farm structures, and other outbuildings, Kyle accompanies people around their house and acreage, making recommendations about what to move, what to cut, how to store things, and what to consider.

The most common misconception among property owners is that they have to cut down every tree on their property, he says, when in fact what they probably need to do is remove underbrush and limb their trees up to a certain height, and perhaps thin them. He shows them how to do that.

Another misconception is that composite shingles — the type formerly known as asphalt shingles that are in fact no longer made of asphalt — are highly flammable when actually they are as fire resistant as a metal roof.

Some people, when imagining a fire affecting their house, think of a wall of flames gradually approaching, but it’s often not like that.

“One of the biggest things you learn from fires in Fort McMurray, Slave Lake, and California is a lot of fires are started by an ember storm. Lit embers can cause spot fires that can lead up to your house.”

Kyle’s boss at the RDCK, Nora Hannon, says embers have been known to travel up to 12 kilometres.

“With the right fire conditions, it is like being in a blizzard,” she says, “where you have snow blowing into every nook and cranny, you have embers blowing around your home. So if you have materials around your home, that acts as kindling.”

She says the FireSmart program recognizes three ignition zones around a home: within 10 meters, 10-to-30 metres, and 30-to-100 metres.

“Research has found if you mitigate in zone one (within 10 metres), that is where you are most likely to have the home survive a fire.”

So her specialists start with the house and work their way out, and of course eventually they encounter the neighbour’s property.

“If their forest borders on a neighour’s forest,” Kyle says, “they understand that if they don’t do something, their neighbour’s property could be affected by that. For a lot of people on acreages, mitigation takes a lot of work and a lot of time. We give them an assessment that is a work list, and that is something they can work on over time.”

Hannon says in addition to certifying specific homes, the RDCK has a neighbourhood-based FireSmart community program.

Queens Bay, Woodbury and Kaslo Back Road have all received community recognition under the program. Communities that receive this recognition develop a wildfire plan based on a wildfire hazard assessment. The community implements recommendations in their plan annually to receive recognition. A community receiving recognition is working towards FireSmart, but may not be entirely FireSmart, Hannon says.

Meanwhile, Kyle says he finds his work very fulfilling.

“It feels like really important work,” he says. “Everybody who has had me out [to their property] is glad I was there, really appreciative of the work I did.”

Related:

FireSmart assessment an eye-opener for Nelson homeowner

FireSmart program has homeowners ‘thinking like an ember’



bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com

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Bill Metcalfe

About the Author: Bill Metcalfe

I have lived in Nelson since 1994 and worked as a reporter at the Nelson Star since 2015.
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