Image Credit: B.C. Wildfire Management Branch
August 29, 2023 - 6:00 AM
After record-breaking wildfire seasons in 2017 and 2018, there was a lot of talk about deliberately setting forests on fire, including in the West Kelowna area, to reduce future fire risk.
The FireSmart program encourages people to remove fire hazards from around their homes but also includes prescribed or cultural burning of some forest lands.
The problem with those burns is that it takes a lot of planning, and then when the time comes, weather, forest and venting conditions have to be just right before the fires can be lit.
That, realistically, means only a few days in the spring and fall have been at all suitable to "FireSmart" the forests with fire.
READ MORE: B.C. residents can choose when they want their forests to burn
Fast forward to August 2023 when the conditions couldn’t be worse because of the tinder dry forests in the Okanagan and throughout BC but those types of fires are being lit in and around the McDougall Creek Wildfire on an ongoing basis.
“There is a little bit of crossover there,” Brad Litke, the incident commander for BC Wildfires, said at a news conference Monday, Aug. 28 when asked if part of the thinking in lighting these fires was for future protection and not just to put this fire out.
“Often, when we’re fighting fires in the forested areas, if there are previous burned areas we will be looking at those burned areas as potential anchor points because the fire has previously gone through it has removed a bunch of the fuel and will take the intensity out of a new wildfire moving into it,” Litke said.
READ MORE: iN VIDEO: Smoke from controlled burns in West Kelowna area will be highly visible
Specialists have been brought in to the McDougall Creek Wildfire who have the expertise to evaluate how these intentional burns are conducted.
The target is to burn potential fuel in a controlled manner as well as to create fire guards or bring the fire to areas where it’s safer to fight.
“As a result of a lot of the ignitions we are conducting along guards with aircraft and personnel, those areas will have received, in a roundabout way, a fuel treatment for the future,” Litke said.
“The intent is to remove the fuel. We’re not trying to remove the forest. We’re trying to make sure we have moderate intensity burns to reduce mortality to the forest itself so, from a future perspective, once we have control of these wildfires, it will aid in the reduction of fire behaviour for the future.”
READ MORE: Almost 2,400 still evacuated and 240 homes seriously damaged by West Kelowna wildfire
Prescribed burns will continue around the McDougall Creek Wildfire this week. It has now consumed 12,835 ha and is still burning out of control.
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