Firefighters successfully completed a 42-hectare prescribed burn on the northwest side of the Canadian Rockies International Airport on Tuesday, April 2nd.
It was a multi-agency effort between the City of Cranbrook, BC Wildfire Service, the City of Kimberley and contractors, as weather conditions aligned to ensure the burn could be done with minimal risk.
“We did just over 42 hectares of land, it all went really, really well,” said Scott Driver, Director of Cranbrook Fire and Emergency Services. “The winds were just as we had wished them to be and it [the burn] was mostly grassy fuels with some coniferous trees and deciduous bushes on the landscape. The consumption of fuels was what we were hoping for to provide protection without putting any of the adjacent areas at risk.”
The prescribed burn tied in with some backburning that was done during suppression efforts against the St. Mary’s River wildfire last summer, while also serving as an annual maintenance to protect the airport infrastructure.
The smoke from the burn did not interfere with any flights at the airport.
Grant funding for the operation was provinded by the Columbia Basin Trust.
Prescribed burning is the intentional use of fire in a specific area — typically a low-intensity burn — that consumes built up fuels on the landscape. While serving as a form of wildfire protection, there are also ecological benefits as low-intensity fire clears away dead vegetation to enable regrowth and regeneration.
Driver said the fire department is planning one more prescribed burn in a few weeks that will be done to protect city assets in the Gold Creek area.
Across the Kootenays, the Southeast Fire Centre has 17 prescribed burns planned for the spring season, seven of which will be in the East Kootenay.
Given the severity of recent wildfire season in B.C. and the Kootenays, prescribed burning is becoming another tool in a municipal fire department toolbox to mitigate the potential for large high-intensity events that could threaten a community.
“Certainly, there’s an awareness right across the province, politically, socially and in the fire service, that we do need to do more of this work and we do need to hurry up and get it done,” Driver said.
“I think right across the province in communities, there’s a focus on getting towards this work, but there’s certainly a very big hill to climb in terms of building that capacity, because there’s not a lot of experts in this business. And so we are working towards building that capacity locally, the province is working towards building that capacity provincially and we’re all trying to support each other as fast as we can.”