With the Sea to Sky fire season starting to get underway, Lil'wat Nation's FireSmart coordinator, Dillon Bikadi, shared some tips on how to reduce the risk of wildfires to homes.
"The choices we make about our homes and properties out to 100 metres from the foundation can greatly reduce the vulnerability to wildfire," reads a release from the Nation.
There are a handful of factors that can make a yard more vulnerable to fires; keeping fuels like piles of firewood, construction materials, patio furniture, tools and decorative items against or near your house is considered a major fire hazard. Combustible landscaping mulch—like bark, pine or rubber—can produce "embers that may ignite [other] combustible materials," increasing the chances of a home catching fire. The release also noted evergreen trees are particularly flammable, and "should not be within 10 metres of your home."
To take action on these items, Bikadi suggests installing a one-and-a-half-metre, non-combustible surface around the entire property to reduce wind-blown embers igniting materials. Non-combustibles like gravel, brick or concrete are good building materials for that radius.
There are also landscaping choices that can help insulate your home.
FireSmart suggests swapping combustible mulch for gravel, noting "a mowed lawn is a fire-resistant lawn. Grasses shorter than 10 centimetres in height are less likely to burn intensely."
Regularly cleaning up fallen branches, dry grass and needles from the ground can eliminate readily available fuel for a wildfire, as can removing tree branches up to a height of two metres from the ground on evergreen trees within 30 metres of the property.
Bikadi also suggests seeking fire-resistant flora for the landscape within 10 metres of the home. FireSmart BC's website provides a tool to help find fire-resistant plants. The platform ranks a wide range of plants—from trees and shrubs to grasses, bulbs and more—by how close they can be safely planted on a property.
Fire season is off to a quick start; a 4.36-hectare fire in Squamish's Brohm Ridge area was sparked on April 27 and put out by the BC Wildfire Service on April 30. And Whistler's fire danger rating was recently upgraded to high.
The Wildfire Service provides an up-to-date list of fire restrictions and active fires across the province. To report a wildfire, call 911 or 1 800 663-5555 toll-free, or dial *5555 on a cell phone.
