Stock image of fuel management (photo courtesy of the B.C. Wildfire Service)

By Liam Verster

Thinning, Clearing Fuel Loads

Fire fuel management planned for Eastside Road

Jun 27, 2023 | 3:16 PM

The City of Vernon will be taking action to prevent fires in the Eastside Road neighbourhoods.

At the regular meeting Monday, June 26, Vernon city council learned it had successfully secured a $250,000 grant through the Forest Enhancement Society of B.C. to treat lands within the city boundaries, including 105 hectares of provincial Crown land in the Eastside Road area.

The funds will be provided directly to the service provider through a third party, taking the financial risk off the city. Vernon Fire Rescue Services recommended Forsite Consultants Ltd. be named the service providers, as the company has past experience with this type of work and other projects funded through the Forest Enhancement Society.

The contractor will use the money to manage fire fuels and reduce the risk of a wildfire starting and spreading within a heavily treed area at the southern city boundary. Approximately 27 hectares of the area within the designated 105 hectare zone was previously treated.

The area where fire treatment work is needed is outlined in red. The yellow outline shows where previous fuel management work had been done. (Image courtesy of the City of Vernon)

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“This is provincial Crown land within the city’s municipal boundary, so normally that would fall to the Crown to treat the land [but] they have urgent priorities and this project doesn’t fit within their current priorities,” Vernon Fire Chief David Lind told Vernon council Monday.

“But through forest enhancement, an interested party can apply for grant funds to treat those lands, of course in cooperation with the land manager.”

Lind added this area has been identified in the Community Wildfire Prevention Plan because the prevailing winds would push a fire from that area north towards the Eastside neighbourhoods and the city.

Lind said the majority of the work at the site would be hand work.

“It’s not a land clearing type of treatment, this is actually a thinning, piling, and then raising the understory [vegetation] in the area so that when fires do occur in this area that they stay on the ground and are easier to manage,” Lind explained.

Lind noted the stratas in the area have taken it upon themselves to undertake FireSmart activities in recent years and the province has done some work in Ellison Park, but more is required.

Vernon council received the report and voted in favour of naming Forsite the contractor for the work.

Speaking with Vernon Matters after the meeting, Mayor Victor Cumming stated there is a lot of fuel loads in the area.

“Small trees in between big trees, lots of dead branches and stuff on the forest floor, which create a problem as, if you get a forest fire, it turns into ladder fuel so then it shoots it up the trees and you get a crown fire, and crown fires are real quick and are real hot,” Cumming said.

“So what you want to do is clean up all the low stuff, also take some of the trees out to space and thin, which would have happened naturally with annual fires, but we make sure there’s no annual fires so we better do some reducing of the fuel load.”

He said the thinning, clearing and controlled pile burning won’t be done until conditions improve and there’s less risk of a fire spreading, indicating the work could be done in the fall or next spring.