Incentivizing residents to make their homes FireSmart, thanks to successful grant funding

The Whitecourt Fire Department successfully obtained a grant of $100,000, broken into two parts. The first $50,000 is to purchase a 20-foot sprinkler trailer, and the second half is to establish the FireSmart Homeowner Incentive Program. Fire Chief Brian Wynn said the funding allows them to incentivize residents to make changes to their residences following a FireSmart Home Assessment.

“If we see that there is a risk that they can mitigate, this is to give the homeowner an incentive to change it. A lot of times when we go to a home, we hear, what’s in it for me? Well, now we have something to give.” Chief Wynn said that FireSmart Alberta would monitor the program as a pilot program. “They want to start something like this provincially if and when they ever receive the funds, so we will be a pilot project for the entire province to see how this goes out.”

To implement the program, Chief Wynn needed the Town of Whitecourt to create a policy that outlined how the incentive program works. On June 20, Chief Wynn brought the breakdown to the Policies and Priorities Committee meeting to share how it would work. Homeowners within Whitecourt can take part only once they’ve completed a FireSmart Home Assessment this year from the fire department.

Specific changes are more impactful from a risk standpoint, and those higher risk factors are considered before funding is given. “We’ve targeted the biggest risk. So, one would be if you have wood shakes on your roof. We want to get rid of them. Other communities, Banff is one of them, give a $1,000 rebate to residents to change their roofs, so we are following their lead to do the same thing. That will be our top one to give out,” explained Chief Wynn.

From the policy, $10,000 will be set aside for those who upgrade their roof to a “Class A ignition resistant roof material,” broken down into ten rebates of $1,000 each. Twenty rebates, valued at $500 each, will be set aside to replace sheathing or screening beneath decks. A big one for Chief Wynn is mulch. The highly combustible material will be part of twenty rebates valued at $500 each for residents who swap rock or a non-combustible substitute for their mulch.

“Also, if homeowners have a problem coniferous tree, a rebate can help them with the cost of removing it. I don’t care if they do it themselves or with an arborist. If they get rid of the hazard, then we will help them with the cost of removing the trees,” said Chief Wynn. The policy dictates that there will be fifteen rebates valued at $1,000 each for tree removal.

Last up is eavestrough cleaning and coverage. “With eavestroughs, either get them cleaned, or what we would like to see them do is get them covered so that we don’t have residents continuously up on the roof. You know they won’t go up there continuously anyway, so we want to see them covered with screens or something.” There are twenty-five rebates of $200 for that purpose.

Those five improvements are the program’s top targets, and Chief Wynn hopes to get residents going on home assessments so that changes can start happening. “They have to get a home assessment done by us first so that we are recording it and have the before pictures. The homeowner just has to fill out the form we made with the after pictures, and then we will divvy the funds back to the homeowners at the end of each year.”

Certain community areas are considered higher risk and will therefore be prioritized. A resident that lives along Centennial Park and backs onto the trees has priority simply due to proximity to the forest as a potential entry point for a fire to get into the community. The first round of applications will go until October 1, 2022, and the second round will happen next year with the deadline of August 31, 2023. Councillor Derek Schlosser said he had purchased a leaf blower with an attachment specifically for eavestroughs, which takes him about ten minutes. “I can do it twice a year, easy. Getting up there (on the roof) and cleaning everything out was way too much to do because you have to move the ladder every time.”

Chief Wynn said that was a good option. He noted that up in the areas they are doing the home assessments, it’s often seniors. “They are probably not going to do that stuff, so if they can hire a contractor to screen the eaves troughs. Then they never have to touch them, so that’s the direction I want to push some of those people.”

During Whitecourt Town Council’s last regular meeting of June, the group voted unanimously to adopt Policy 23-012 – FireSmart Homeowner Incentive Program. To book a FireSmart Home Assessment, contact the Whitecourt Fire Department.