Living and breathing Firesmart until it becomes second nature

On Friday, August 6, the Town of Whitecourt, Woodlands County, Alberta Wildfire, and the Whitecourt Fire Department held a joint event at Rotary Park to stress the importance of Firesmart practices in the community. Two booths provided information on how residents can safeguard their homes and yards, and members from both emergency response crews were on hand to chat. Rain during the first half of the three-hour event proved to be a bit of a damper.

The fire department had Tower 1 on display, and Alberta Wildfire brought along one of their contracted helicopters. Colby Lachance, Information Officer for the Whitecourt Forest Area working for Alberta Wildfire, said everyone was happy to hold the first Firesmart event since COVID. “We have come together to help educate the public on Firesmart practices to try and mitigate some potential threats that may be coming through the community.”

The Alberta Wildfire tent featured a display showing ignition zones around a structure. It showed how close trees should be, how to prune them and some of the small steps residents can make. “If we are looking at the vegetation aspect of Firesmart, we want to plant more of the leafier trees, like birch and aspen, compared to spruce and pine,” explained Lachance.

The display indicated that non-firesmart materials such as wood or vinyl are not the best choices. “We want to stick more to shingles that are fire-resistant, and we want to stick to stucco and metal siding.” She said that a wood fence and its proximity to a home is another big one. “Even small things like your gutters and making sure that they are clear of debris. If a wildfire comes through, it will ignite the debris in the gutters, which makes it more likely for your home to be destroyed. Cutting your grass is another. Having double-paned windows will help too,” she said.

A Helitak crew from Alberta Wildfire was part of their contingent at the event. “They are more of a sustained action crew. They are there right away. They can get to the hard to get places, right beside the wildfire, in the forest,” said Lachance. She said that crews from Alberta have exported to provinces facing a crisis from wildfires.

For Whitecourt Fire Department Fire Chief Brian Wynn, finally holding an event for the public was exciting. “We need to do more. Promoting Firesmart, to me, is the number one fire prevention message we can teach our community and not just the town, but the county too and the rest of the province. If you look at what’s happening in BC right now, we could be there too. We were probably close to that three, four weeks ago. The hazards are there, and the fuels are there, so how do we mitigate them? We reduce our risk,” he explained.

For Chief, this event was the first time they officially introduced Tower 1 to the community. “It’s a well-equipped truck that is going to serve our community well for the next twenty years. We are very happy to showcase it. If you explain everything the truck can do, and people understand the multifunction and multipurpose of it, then they can see that’s a good truck.”

Tower 1 has massive hydraulics. They stabilize the truck and allow it to do maneuvers that are truly awesome to watch. “The mast can go out 93ft sideways, so if you didn’t have those stabilizers, then the truck could tip over. It has six outriggers on it which are new to an apparatus. Our outriggers have our stabilizes pads and everything attached so we can have this thing set up and stabilized in 20 seconds.” That means they can get to work less than a minute after arriving on the scene.

“This is the biggest pump that we have in the fleet, eight thousand litres per minute. When we have log deck fires or big industrial fires, we need that big, elevated water. Even our pet store fire, I could’ve totally used this there,” said Chief Wynn. The mast, which reaches high into the sky, means that his department can fight a fire from above without sending a firefighter onto a dangerous roof.

Typically, firefighters are in the public eye more often, and over the last year, the local department missed out on many educational opportunities. They are used to visiting schools and bringing fire safety knowledge to the youth. “A big part of being a fire department is also about what residents can do for prevention. Firesmart is what you can do for fire prevention outside your house. We need to keep educating the public on what they can do, and then as we adopt more Firesmart principles as a community, we will become safer and safer.”

His top tips? Chief Wynn said that, along with cleaning your eavestrough, as Lachance mentioned previously, trimming the vegetation around your house is essential. “If you have cedars and things like that, remove them. If you have mulch right beside your house, remove it. Also, make sure your attic is sealed so that no embers can blow in. Your attic has been sitting in a dry, hot environment for who knows how many years. Once your attic is on fire, your house is gone.”