By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Coinciding with the Canada-wide Wildfire Preparedness Day, Anarchist Mountain held its 12th annual FireSmart Day recently building on its years of success by forging a path to the next level with community resiliency planning.
FireSmart began over a dozen years ago at Anarchist making it one of early adopters of this increasingly important strategy to protect communities from wildfire. From only a handful of concerned residents and working with very little funding, the group is now a subcommittee of the Anarchist Mountain Fire Rescue Society which was formed in 2020.
Mark Pendergraft RDOS Chair and representative for Electoral Area “A” noted that up on Anarchist “we started several years before most groups, but they’re all making good progress. And I think nearly every community is starting to get involved it’s just that they’re just at different stages.”
He noted the importance of FireSmarting properties, particularly living in an interface area like Anarchist. “It’s a good thing to get going and getting the community involved is where it’s really important.”
Funding is less of an issue now as provincial and federal governments are now putting substantial emphasis on the program given the climate-change-induced spike in wildfire activity across the country.
For example, in 2023 the AMFRS was one of 11 Canadian communities awarded $15,000 under a new program developed through a partnership between the Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) and FireSmart Canada of wildfire prevention grants enabling it to defend against trans-border fires on the mountain.
The participation of the underwriting world underscores the importance of the program and is an early warning sign of things to come on the home insurance front.
AMFD Chief Urs Grob states plainly the importance of FireSmarting when he says “The fire department in the event of a fire can do a certain amount. BC Wildfire can help us with this, but without FireSmarting we would lose way more structures.”
He added that “if you do the right thing with FireSmarting, then the fire is not such a big threat anymore and so that’s the reason why it’s now on the shoulders of the fire department.”
Grob cites the growing examples of insurance companies offering discounts to homeowners who have FireSmarted their properties and in the case of the American state of California, FireSmarting is required in order simply get insurance in some areas.
“So there is a push here, I’m not saying next year you need an assessment to get the insurance but this is pretty much what the future could look like, especially if we have a few more years like last year and the possibility is here,” he warned.
Top left: Mark Pendergraft RDOS Chair and representative for Electoral Area “A” and Beau Michaud (right). Top right: Urs Grob AMFD Fire Chief. Bottom left: Gerry Moran, Program Lead for the Anarchist Mountain Fire Rescue Society (AMFRS) Wildfire Prevention and Anarchist Mountain Fire Department. Bottom right: Alex Giovanelli, AMFD Deputy Fire Chief.
Brenda Arychuk and Don Urquhart photos
Testament to the growth and success of the AMFD FireSmart committee, the Anarchist Mountain community has about a dozen houses that either currently are, or soon will be recognized as FireSmart-certified homes after undergoing an Advanced Home Assessment. These homes will soon be recognized with signage identifying them as FireSmart homes.
That is an impressive feat as Gerry Moran, Program Lead for the Anarchist Mountain Fire Rescue Society (AMFRS) Wildfire Prevention and Anarchist Mountain Fire Department notes there are only about 50 houses across the entire province that meet that criteria.
While FireSmart may seem an obvious strategy when living in more rural areas like Anarchist, Pendergraft says the message was likely driven home to those living in more built up urban areas like West Kelowna which was hit hard by wildfires last year.
“Even the town of Osoyoos needs to be thinking of Firesmart,” he says. “It’s a little different there because you’re kind of surrounded by orchards and vineyards which is a greenspace, but one ember that happens to start and you could be in trouble.
“It needs to be considered by not just rural areas, towns as well,” he emphasizes.
Meanwhile, not ones to rest on their laurels, Moran and team are already working on the “next big thing”: A Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan. As Moran explains “This is a little bit different from FireSmarting our homes, this is about FireSmarting in our community.”
It includes things like fuel reduction projects, fire breaks, and so on. “That’s something we’re just starting and it’ll be a long-term project but it’ll be a major improvement up here once we get going,” he said.
The resiliency plan is currently being developed by a North Vancouver forestry consulting firm – B.A. Blackwell & Associates – which combines expertise from professional foresters, biologists and ecologists, said Alex Giovanelli, AMFD Deputy Fire Chief.
Coinciding with the Canada-wide Wildfire Preparedness Day, Anarchist Mountain held its 12th annual FireSmart Day recently.
“So they’ll actually come into a community like ours, and they’ll look at and assess what the dangers and risks are in our community, relative to wildfire and come up with a number of recommendations.” This is important he says for applying for grants.
“We have no credibility, we need to have something that’s registered, in this case by a professional forester with credibility that says, ‘this is what you need’, and then we can actually go out and apply for these grants.”
Giovanelli says they’ve been working at getting a report in place for at least five or six years and it’s been just this year that they were able to get the funding. “It’s a big win,” adds Moran.
“We got the funding last year to get the work done for this year,” Giovanelli said adding that the funding was provided through the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) which means they can’t go directly, they need a sponsor which in this case was the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen (RDOS).
FireSmart starts early with these two young Anarchist Mountain residents. Brenda Arychuk photo
The report will also be shared with the Kilpoola residents west of Osoyoos as that is also part of the RDOS Area “A” along with Anarchist Mountain.
“So we’re hopeful within the next couple of months we’ll get this document and when we do, we’ll share it with the community in terms of what those risks are, what the recommendations are,” Giovanelli said adding that this is a long-term plan.
“It’s not something that you just, you know, get done in the following year, it’s probably a 10-year plan. But it provides direction and it’s something that will be of value to us. So we’re really happy to get that.”
He did note however that there are some shortcomings in that whole process, and in particular they would like to see more modelling of fire behaviour. “Nonetheless, this document gets us part way there,” he added.
And they may look at going directly to a professional forestry company like Blackwell, to get some modelling done out of their own pocket, through donations and fundraising.
“Stay tuned,” Giovanelli said, adding “at least we’re on the road of getting one and we’re very happy to be at this particular point.”
BC Wildfire personnel pose with Ember, the FireSmart mascot. Brenda Arychuk photo.
