FILE PHOTO

(JENNIFER STAHN / iNFOnews.ca)

When dark thunderclouds build behind Dzilh Yez (Hudson Bay Mountain) in Smithers, B.C., local weather stations capture essential data.

An array of instruments record and transmit vital information to a small team of scientists who quickly interpret what it could mean for wildfires. Is the relative humidity low? Is the storm carrying rain? How hot is it? Are the winds off the mountain moving towards town?

If lightning strikes and thunder shudders through the valley, meteorologists with the BC Wildfire Service use the data to predict whether the storm is likely to spark a forest fire — and what that fire might look like on the ground.

Every morning during the months-long fire season, Matt MacDonald, lead fire weather forecaster with the BC Wildfire Service, examines conditions with his team and hundreds of frontline firefighters.

“We’re doing this whole analysis, essentially putting a story together that we deliver in the way of a fire weather briefing,” MacDonald explained. “We’re continuously updating the forecasts and making adjustments to how we think the weather is going to evolve, and then highlighting the areas of highest concern.”

The service operates 240 weather stations around the province, strategically placed in forests and on mountains — including one on an alpine ridge near Smithers. These meteorologists, known as fire weather forecasters, assess conditions daily and sometimes hourly by monitoring data from weather stations and Environment Canada. Their analysis informs which hotspots to watch and decisions about where and when firefighters are deployed.

As the size, frequency, duration and intensity of wildfires increases, it’s impossible to ignore how the burning forests around us shape our lives and impact our communities. Yet most of us know very little about what firefighters do on a daily basis or how decisions around wildfires — such as which homes to prioritize during firefighting response — are made.

“It’s kind of this secret world, in some ways, that people don’t know much about,” Kira Hoffman, a fire ecologist and researcher with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, said. “I feel like we should know more about it. We should know how fires are fought.”

Why is it so challenging to fight wildfires in B.C.?

Last year was B.C.’s biggest wildfire season on record. Wildfires continue to escape our limited control, torching communities and displacing thousands, while reshaping vast parts of the province’s landscapes. Part of the challenge is B.C.’s vast and varied geography.

“We have complex topography, we have complex economies, we have complex cultures,” Hoffman said. “All of those need very specific place-based fire research and fire knowledge. We can’t expect what’s going to work in Vancouver to work in Hazelton.”

MacDonald echoed the sentiment, describing the province as the “epitome of complex terrain.” The province has six regional fire centres, which are each divided into fire zones. There are 33 zones across the province.

“Each of these fire centres, each of these zones, each of these localities has their own intrinsic local effects and local climatology. Our work as fire weather forecasters is to try and really dig into the details and produce the best, most accurate forecasts we can for that very specific spot.”

“We’re all trained meteorologists, but we look at weather through a somewhat different lens than your standard meteorologists,” he said.

What does humidity have to do with B.C. wildfires?

MacDonald described humidity as a key driver of how the fuels that feed a fire evolve over time.

“Once we have fire in the landscape [humidity] really dictates how intensely a fire will burn,” he explained.

Relative humidity is a measure of the amount of water vapour in the air, which affects fire dynamics on the landscape. For example, low relative humidity sucks moisture out of potential fuels, making them more flammable. This especially affects finer fuels like grass and pine needles, where many wildfires begin.

The fire weather forecasters monitor moisture levels in both the materials above ground, which are called fine fuels, and the duff, the organic materials that make up the top 10 to 15 centimetres of the forest floor. Each is given a moisture code, informing analysis of how fire will interact with the landscape. The higher the code, the greater the risk.

“We’ll typically look at the duff moisture code as an indicator of the potential for ignition from lightning,” he said. “So if we’re forecasting lightning and it’s falling into a place that’s had a lot of rain, there’s less concern.”

If the duff moisture codes are more elevated and lightning is forecasted, MacDonald said there’s potential for either immediate ignition or what the wildfire service calls holdover fires.

“Lightning likes to strike ridge tops, or tree tops, and then it’ll smoulder, actually, through the root ball and that duff layer,” he explained. “It can actually smoulder for upwards of two weeks. And then if the fuel is dry and we get a little bit of wind, these fires can flare up.”

What are ‘holdover’ wildfires?

Holdover fires can burn through winter, flaring up again in the spring. They’ve sometimes been described as “zombie fires,” a term many firefighters dislike.

“It’s just kind of alarmist, right?” Jeff Walsh, a wildfire officer based in the Bulkley fire zone near Smithers, B.C., told The Narwhal. “It’s just not a factual term that we use. Zombies have to die and come back to life. Holdover fires never died. Essentially, they just burrow underground so it’s just a carryover between seasons — and they’re not as rare as one would expect.”

Drought makes holdover fires more prevalent; as the water table drops, fires can burrow deeper underground. In B.C.’s northeast, multiple years of drought have made fighting those fires more hazardous. Walsh said most of this year’s fires in the region, like the 145,000-hectare Patry Creek wildfire near Fort Nelson on Treaty 8 territory, are holdovers from the 2023 fire season.

“Because the water table is typically higher in that marshy, ’skeggy country, like the Northern Rockies and North Peace, the spruce trees and deciduous [trees] are pretty shallow rooted,” he said. When land isn’t so parched, fire skims through those landscapes, burning the trees without scorching the wet root systems. “But because of the drought, the water table’s lower and they dig in and actually burn — like completely consume all the roots of the trees.”

Getting into an area to clean up after that kind of fire moves through isn’t easy.

“There’s crews digging down six, seven feet,” he said. “There’s pictures of crews chasing smoke, digging holes, standing in these holes that are up to their chests at least.”

And because the fires are burning tree roots, he said massive sections of burnt forest are being blown down after the fire moves through.

“It just looks like a tornado went through there in terms of everything’s on the ground,” he said. “What we’re finding in that country, with the deep burning in the whole root systems, is basically the whole stand is compromised.”

The BC Wildfire Service has strict safety protocols to protect its crews from falling trees. It means crews sometimes can’t safely go into areas to clean up after a fire, which in turn increases the likelihood of fires left burning underground, ready to flare up again in dry winds and high temperatures.

Why are wildfires so big now?

While there have always been wildfires on the landscape, they are becoming bigger and more destructive.

In 2021, the town of Lytton, B.C., burned and has yet to be rebuilt. Last year, fires swept through Scotch Creek, B.C., leaving a wake of devastation; this year, a wildfire razed about a third of the Jasper, Alta., townsite and scorched vast tracts of the national park’s iconic forests.

MacDonald, who worked as an Environment Canada meteorologist for 18 years before joining the BC Wildfire Service in 2020, said he’s witnessed underlying climatic conditions intensify over the past two decades.

“Instead of getting these ridges of high pressure that last three or four or five days, we get these really intense ridges — the recent one in July lasted 20 days and delivered excessive heat for prolonged periods of time.”

In forests, those high pressure ridges are causing unprecedented conditions.

“When you hear guys who have 30 to 35 years under their belt say, ‘I’ve never seen fire behave this way, I’ve never seen fire burn with that much intensity,’ that’s worth a lot in my books,” he added.

The BC Wildfire Service has a long track record of protecting lives and preventing fires from destroying communities, but scientists expect wildfires will burn through more towns and villages — and even cities. Until recently, forest management focused on suppression — putting fires out as quickly as possible — which left combustible materials like dead trees and dry needles and branches to accumulate for decades, increasing the risk today. Along with the prohibition of Indigenous fire stewardship and the pervasive effects of climate change, experts say we’re on a trajectory that can’t be reversed overnight.

But there are ways we can adapt and prepare.

What steps can I take to protect my home from B.C. wildfires?

Hannah Swift leads FireSmart BC, an organization that works to educate and provide support for wildfire preparedness, prevention and mitigation. She told The Narwhal it’s important people understand they have some agency over what happens when a fire burns through their community.

“Previously, there was sort of a misunderstanding that if a wildfire gets into a community, there’s nothing you can do,” she said, noting there are numerous steps homeowners can take to protect their properties.

“When we see wildfires move into communities, the majority of homes that are destroyed actually burn from the inside out, not the outside in,” she said. A good place to start protecting properties is by installing “metal mesh covers over vents or openings in homes,” she explained.

“What we see is when embers come into a community, it’s the embers that damage the home,” she said. “When you have an ember shower coming over structures, generally those are brought through communities by wind. If there’s an open gable in the attic, then embers actually get into the interior of the house, and they light up curtains or carpets. That’s when the home burns from the inside out.”

Even urban areas like Vancouver are not immune. In early August, underlying hot, dry conditions stoked the flames of a fire that consumed a half-built condominium in the city and sent flaming debris hurtling over the neighbourhood. As John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, wrote for the Globe and Mail, “embers were landing blocks away … where they had to be chased down and extinguished by additional personnel. It’s dry here in August; just imagine if one of those had gotten away.”

“We’re always going to see these events,” Swift said. “But we can fire smart to a level where a fire can move through a community without any way of igniting the structures — by removing the fuels within that immediate zone of the home.” Fuels include debris on roofs and leaves in gutters, she said.

Swift said many communities in B.C. have programs in place through FireSmart BC that provide free assessments for property owners. With an assessment in hand, homeowners can look into rebates from local governments to cover the mitigation work, or do it themselves. Once a property is certified through a FireSmart program, owners can also talk to their insurance companies about discounts on premiums.

“There are insurers starting to partner with us, where they will offer either a rebate or a discount on yearly insurance rates to those homeowners who have taken action and completed all of those recommended steps to mitigate their home,” she said.

How do firefighters decide which homes to save?

Swift said the members of the BC Wildfire Service are highly skilled at protecting structures and will implement protection measures like rooftop sprinklers during what’s called an “interface fire,” which has the potential to simultaneously burn buildings and forest fuel or vegetation. But they only have so much capacity, she said, noting firefighters on the ground have to make tough decisions about which homes to prioritize saving.

“The sprinklers are the cherry on top of mitigation work that’s already taken place,” she said, choosing her words carefully as she explained the process. “But if a property hasn’t been mitigated — well, sprinklers are going to be less effective.”

She said firefighters will focus their efforts on protecting properties most likely to survive, which tend to be homes that have already applied FireSmart principles.

That doesn’t mean the crews on the ground and behind the scenes aren’t doing everything they possibly can to protect all homes in communities. MacDonald said his team receives specific fire weather forecast requests whenever a wildfire gets close to where people live.

“Whenever these fires pose a threat to values, like community infrastructure values or sometimes Indigenous values, cultural values, we’ll get a spot request,” he said. Values can refer to things like bridges, homes, businesses, sacred sites and important hunting or trapping areas.

“This is a very detailed, comprehensive look at the area, and very detailed forecasts of all those weather elements, like the temperatures, the wind, precipitation and chance of lightning, and how that’s all going to evolve over the next 72 hours. So it enables the team who’s been deployed to that fire to really assess and strategize how they’re going to respond and attack this fire.”

Walsh said the BC Wildfire Service has people throughout the province “thinking about and looking at every fire start that happens, whether it’s on site or in an office, making assessments around potential impacts and then making tough decisions around where resources go.”

“We have the same tensions as everybody in the community — we want to see your community safe.”

What steps are taken to keep firefighters safe?

Last year, four firefighters were killed during wildfire response across Canada and an additional four died in a car accident while returning from a shift on the B.C. fireline. This year, a 24-year-old firefighter with the Alberta Wildfire service died while responding to the Jasper fire. These tragic losses of lives are rare. Within the world of wildfire response, safety protocols include specialized fire weather forecasts from people like MacDonald and his team.

MacDonald said the ever-changing dynamics around wildfire response means there’s a constant back and forth between his team of forecasters and the crews on the ground — and his team regularly provides specific safety forecasts to support firefighters on the front lines through radio communications.

“For our firefighters who are out there, we will issue two types of weather warnings,” he said.

The first is a wind warning — and the wildfire service’s definition of strong winds is considerably lower than Environment Canada’s criteria. “In the forest environment, sustained winds of 30 kilometres an hour can actually be enough to start pushing over trees, particularly drought-stricken trees.” The second is for thunderstorms, as lightning strikes can exacerbate an already-raging fire.

What type of support do firefighters need?

Hoffman, a former firefighter with the BC Wildfire Service who now supports Indigenous communities in revitalizing cultural burning practices, said it’s easy to forget most people don’t know what it’s like to be on a fire line. Fighting fire has been such a big part of her life — but increasingly, wildfires are a part of everyone else’s reality, too.

“There will be more Jaspers, there will be more Lyttons — there’s no way we can live in this province and not have that happen,” she said.

As wildfires impact more communities every year, frontline firefighters are facing increasing pressures. As The Narwhal reported last year, the firefighter turnover rate in B.C. and Alberta is around 50 per cent or higher.

“I think we need to spend more time appreciating the people who are doing this,” Hoffman added. “Because if we don’t value the people, we’re going to get into more mental health situations, more issues where there’s just not enough support for those first responders.”

Firefighters are doing the best they can, she said.

“I think that we just need more respect for that.”

— This story was originally published by The Narwhal.

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