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Wildfire: Could it happen here?

Sooner or later all forests see fire, but not all forests burn the same way

Last summer’s fires in interior B.C. hammered home the risk of living next to forests. The toll was staggering: 334 homes lost, 45,000 people evacuated, three firefighter deaths, and total costs approaching $700 million.

And B.C. wasn’t alone. Fires raged from Washington to southern California, often right next to densely-populated communities. This summer is shaping up to be another dry one and odds are it will be another big fire year.

Last year’s fires certainly got people’s attention, especially in the dry Interior where populations are booming with migrants attracted by the sunny, dry climate and cowboy-lite culture. Subdivisions in places like Kamloops and Invermere are nestled among the vanilla-scented ponderosa pines that make these areas so picturesque.

What the real estate ads neglect to mention is that these beautiful forests will, sooner or later, see fire.

Of course, over the past 60 or so years, wildfires have been very effectively controlled. So it’s understandable that our species’ primal fear of wildfires has dimmed and we feel comfortable building cedar-shaked, wood-framed houses in the forest. Ironically, the success of the Smokey the Bear approach to suppressing all fires has made many forests much more flammable. Last year’s fires were a predictable, if delayed, consequence.

The bottom line is that fire is going to happen. Historically, fires in ponderosa pine ecosystems happened every 10 or 15 years. Frequent, low-severity surface fires kept dead wood and forest litter from building up and also killed many of the smaller trees. Bigger trees, due to their thick bark, usually survived in open, park-like stands.

After decades of effective fire control, the average dry forest is denser and much more susceptible to severe fires. The in-growth of smaller trees, no longer controlled by fire, provides a perfect ladder for fires to move into the tree canopy. When a fire reaches this stage, it becomes much more intense and difficult to control, and it doesn’t leave much standing in its wake – neither trees nor million dollar houses.

An interface fire conference in Whistler this past week drew more than 200 experts to discuss ways to reduce risks from interface fires and to restore historic forest conditions. The 28 impressive speakers included experts from throughout the American west, Alberta, and B.C. Two main conclusions emerged:

(i) We need to reduce fuels in forests to lower the risk of high-severity fires, and

(ii) Communities and homeowners need to take an active role in fireproofing.

These conclusions mirror key recommendations made earlier this year by Gary Filmon, ex-premier of Manitoba. Filmon, who spoke at the conference, was commissioned by the B.C. government to review last year’s fires and recently published his findings in a report called Firestorm 2003.

Restoring Ecosystems

Speakers at the conference discussed many strategies for restoring forests to historic conditions, or at least to make them less susceptible to uncontrollable wildfires. It turns out that the Smokey the Bear approach to stopping all wildfires is now as unhip as throwing a lit cigarette into the forest. Instead, the conference heard about bringing fire back into the system, with one caveat: that fuel loads in many forests must first be reduced to prevent the reintroduction of fire from wiping out whole forests and surrounding communities.

Don Gayton, attending the conference from Nelson, is a long-time advocate for active management of dry forests: "We need to get over our fear of manipulating forests. There’s a strong current in the environmental sector that the best thing to do for nature is to lock it up and leave it alone. Unfortunately, in many instances, that’s the wrong thing to do, particularly when we have settlements and forests adjacent to one another."

While that may be the perception of environmentalists, Eva Riccius from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society does not fit the stereotype.

"There’s a need for ecosystem restoration across landscapes – inside and outside parks," she said.

However, Riccius couched her enthusiasm for restoration in parks, which would include some selective removal of trees (a.k.a. logging), with warnings about the need to ensure there was no profit motive driving the process.

Several speakers used a risk assessment approach to rank priority areas for treatment. The approach uses two parameters: probability of wildfire and consequences of that wildfire. Highest priority is given to areas with both a high probability and high consequence of fire, for example, many of the Interior areas affected by fire last summer.

But, according to fire ecologist Bruce Blackwell, this analysis doesn’t let Whistler off the hook: "The dry forests in the Interior have a higher probability of fire; here in Whistler the probability is lower. But the consequence, given the investment in infrastructure and the value of the community from a land perspective, is off the scale."

The experts’ preferred approach for restoring dry forests to historic conditions is a mix of mechanical thinning followed by prescribed burns. Manipulation is most intensive close to population centres, with less effort farther away. Speakers representing three park services (U.S., Canada, and B.C.) related a similar strategy. Wherever possible, parks now let wildfires burn uncontrolled. But manipulation in other parks, especially those that abut communities is, or will be, intensive. Yes, that means logging trucks coming out of parks.

Could Wildfire Happen in Whistler?

Most media attention, and this past week’s conference, focus on dry forests in the Interior. Whistler and other coastal locations were mostly unaffected by fire last year. Does that mean that our forests don’t burn?

The short answer is no. There’s definitely a long history of fire in our valley, but it is very different than that found in dry Interior forests. I’m in the middle of a project for the Resort Municipality of Whistler where I core trees to determine historic patterns of forest changes – by fire, flood, insect, or other natural "disturbance." And at virtually every study location I’ve found small pieces of charcoal in the soil. Unfortunately, that charcoal only proves there’s been fire sometime since the last glaciation, some 10,000 years ago. Without carbon dating (at $500 a sample!), the only way to deduce the size, extent and time since fire across the landscape is with the age of the trees.

Results to date show that the big trees on most sites are well in excess of 300 years; some are over 600 years. Even the small lodgepole pines on rock outcrops in Emerald are seldom younger than 150 years. Fire is certainly much, much less frequent than in the Okanagan hot spots, yet there’s no doubt fire played a major role in shaping our forests.

Meanwhile, clearcut logging in the past half century has had a more dramatic impact on our lower-elevation forests than recent fires, changing them from predominately old forests to mostly uniform, dense, second growth. According to Blackwell: "The high elevation old-growth is probably at the least fire risk. It’s in the wettest and coldest biogeoclimatic zone. The risk is predominantly in what we call the Coastal Western Hemlock zone, which has had extensive harvest resulting in young forests which are less diverse in structure, more contiguous, denser, and therefore more vulnerable to fire."

Fireproofing with FireSmart

The second prong of reducing fire risks comes down to the homeowner and community level. Blackwell warns: "Many of the buildings in Whistler are constructed from materials vulnerable to fire and those buildings are constructed immediately against the forest. So here I’m maybe not so worried about a lightning-caused fire, but maybe I’m worried about someone’s barbecue igniting a rooftop that spreads to the forest and actually burns up the interface. It might work in reverse here where the fire comes from the human-caused and does more damage than a wildland fire."

To help fireproof homes, Whistler last year adopted an initiative called FireSmart. A short read of the FireSmart manual (available at Whistler’s fire hall) shows there will be challenges to implementing it without local modifications. The recommended building materials couldn’t be more dissimilar to the average Whistler house: roofing made of metal, clay, or asphalt shingles rather than wooden shakes or shingles, and exterior walls made of stucco, brick, or concrete rather than wood.

The FireSmart ideal is also to fireproof around houses, especially within 10 metres: "Remove any shrubs, trees, deadfall or woodpiles from this area and keep your grass mowed and watered." In most of our subdivisions that would mean no trees, not to mention a run on grass seed and sprinklers.

Don MacLaurin, the RMOW’s consulting forester, has sounded the alarm about the risk of wildfires perhaps longer than anyone else in Whistler. While he strongly supports the intent of FireSmart, he’s looking for a common sense approach to fit Whistler.

"The fire department would prefer to see clearing 10 metres away from buildings, but that’s not going to happen (due to homeowner resistance)," MacLaurin says. "But that doesn’t mean homeowners can be complacent. People have to avoid tree branches growing under eaves and prune above the roof line to prevent laddering fuels. Just some common sense things – access, buffer zones, clear lines of communication, you name it. But first and foremost, it’s people and homes."

Whistler Fire Chief Bruce Hall also takes a pragmatic approach towards implementing FireSmart and, like MacLaurin, wants to see a variety of options.

"I think we need to look at using existing fire breaks within the corridor and thinning trees around the municipality, which would also increase habitat values," Halls says. "The idea of thinning is to bring the fire back down to the ground, to make it manageable. Changing species of trees is another option. Some deciduous species will actually stop fire. That’s all part of creating fire breaks in the municipality."

Making such fundamental changes in public perception and behaviour is a big challenge, made even more difficult in a resort town like Whistler, according to MacLaurin.

"Probably the major challenge is the fact that we have a lot of absentee owners. And we have a huge educational program requirement," he says.

This challenge was encountered head-on last fall when the fire department, helped by the Ministry of Forests, implemented a pilot public education project in Emerald Estates. Brochures and other information were left on every doorstep, but elicited only a weak response. The municipality and fire department are now expanding their efforts. Chief Hall expects the new program to begin in the next few weeks, and implementation to span several years.

MacLaurin was impressed most by a combined homeowner/wildland initiative in Jasper (called FireSmart—Forest Wise) that takes a holistic approach that combines fire safety and ecological restoration for wildlife.

"Plus, they have managed to engage the community and that, I think, is the key. An educated community is crucial.

"We have a long way to go," says MacLaurin. "And as (Forest Minister) Mike de Jong said this morning, we don’t want to be sitting in a sea of charred stumps in 2010."

Bob Brett is a local ecologist currently working on a fire history of the Whistler area for the Resort Municipality of Whistler. Results of the study will appear in a future Pique article.