Canadians are taking dramatic steps to avoid more ruinous firestorms

This year’s fire season is already ramping up. On May 14th a blaze raging over 200 square km forced 6,600 residents of Fort McMurray, in north-eastern Alberta, to flee. Oil drillers were on alert, too. The province’s tar sands—one of the most polluting sources of oil in the world—produce 3.3m barrels per day (b/d) of crude, equivalent to just over 3% of the global supply. In 2016 a hellish wildfire forced 1m b/d of production offline. Rystad Energy, a consultancy, warns that the worst-case scenario this time could put more than 2m b/d at risk by threatening pits, people and pipelines. Residents have since been allowed to return, and fortuitous rains have curbed the spread of the fire.

To fight these alien monsters, Canada’s fire services are mustering drones that drop “dragon-egg bombs”, summoning the long-ignored wisdom of indigenous peoples and heeding the ancient counsel of an admonishing cartoon bear. That means relying on mitigation and preparation, rather than mere suppression, to deal with firestorms that many fear are Canada’s new normal. Bone-dry ground conditions after a season of scant snowfall and spring droughts across Canada’s north mean the floors of the forests are primed with plenty of material to ignite another catastrophic wildfire season.

Smokey Bear, the dour ursine of the United States Forest Service, who for decades told North Americans that “only YOU can prevent forest fires”, has been reincarnated in the form of foreboding-filled fire officials like Dennis Craig. Hired by the resort town of Kelowna after about 200 homes last year were reduced to cinders, Mr Craig was given the newly created title of assistant chief of wildfire mitigation and preparation. Kelowna is one of many towns shifting its resources from fire-suppression to preparation. And the onus is on residents. “We’re delivering a hard message to home-owners this year,” says Mr Craig. “It’s time to start looking at your own properties and changing your behaviours.”

Fire officials have been going door-to-door, urging people to “firesmart” their houses. Requests for their visits have gone up ten-fold, according to city officials. The plans aim to turn buildings and the vegetation around them into firebreaks, rather than fire hazards. Cedar shingles and hedges that often adorn properties need to be ripped out and replaced. Decorative wood mulch is being replaced by gravel. Gutters and vents are having mesh applied to stop sparks from igniting houses. Pine trees are being pruned several metres above the ground, to prevent fires in their crowns acting as launch pads for further blazes. Sprinkler systems are now being installed outside homes, with plans to set them off before fire arrives. Wooden fences that served as ignition routes are being removed. Gardening stores are flogging firesmart-approved trees and shrubs. They are selling out of them.

Technology is buzzing to the rescue as well. Drones equipped with infrared and night-vision cameras are going where it is too dangerous for firefighters to tread. They track hotspots and send guidance to the smartphones of those suppressing fires. Other drones that can cost as much as C$85,000 ($62,000) are now equipped with the “dragon egg” fire suppression technology—ping-pong-sized balls of potassium permanganate injected with ethylene glycol and dropped from the drone to the ground where they ignite. They are used to burn fuel in the path of a wildfire, to stop its spread. Small towns like nearby Vernon are investing in fire vehicles that can master any terrain and scramble up mountainsides or haul sprinkler trailers into remote fire spots.

The cost of all this is being borne by property-owners and taxpayers. Don Iveson, a former mayor of Edmonton who is now climate-investment adviser for Co-operators Insurance, says those who are reluctant to pay now may soon find they have no choice, as houses in wildfire zones are becoming hard to insure. “This is beginning to bite,” he says. “It’s hard to finance a house if you can’t get insurance. We’re seeing an impact on property values.”

Last year’s fires were so bad they have prompted a return to the long-ignored indigenous practice of controlled burns. For centuries leaders of Canada’s First Nations performed “cultural burns” in the cool of spring to cleanse the landscape of fire fuels and maintain a careful balance between woods, deer, bears and birds.

“That recreates nutrients, removes pests, cleans out ticks,” says George Lampreau, chief of the Simpcw First Nation (pronounced “Seemp”, with a lip-pursed exhalation at the end), located in Barriere, British Columbia, 420km (260 miles) north-east of Vancouver. The burns also had the effect of creating firebreaks in the blazes that were started by summer lightning. They fought fire with fire.

Lessons of the tribal past

Cultural burns were outlawed in British Columbia 150 years ago. Punishments could entail a three-month prison term. As burns come back, so does the wisdom of indigenous elders. They work with ranchers and loggers before fire season begins to create firebreaks. Their methods nowadays are both ancient and modern: bulldozers scour away dried grass and undergrowth, along with pristine, towering pine trees, clearing paths through the forest hundreds of metres wide. Fuel canisters resembling elongated coffee pots then drip dollops of flame along the cleared ground. What’s left cannot fuel a fire. The corridors act both as bulwarks against wind-swept flames and as corridors through which hoses, helicopters and other fire-suppression equipment can be moved.

Just such a firebreak, as well as the deft work of Chu Chua Volunteer Fire Department squads under Ron Lampreau, helped arrest fires that threatened his community during last year’s fire season. “When we first built the firebreak, there were complaints about clear-cutting. After the fire, the complainers said we didn’t build the break wide enough.”

Mr Lampreau’s success has led to funding for him to train “Little Campfire That Could” teams across the country. “We’re building big-ass firebreaks,” said Mike Westwick, fire-information officer for Canada’s Northwest Territories, which are also vulnerable to fire.

Annual wildfire-fighting costs in Canada are running at about C$1.2bn on average over the past decade. Those costs are expected to double by 2040. Some of the fires, like the two largest ones last year in the northern reaches of Quebec and British Columbia, cannot be fought by any means. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, according to Mike Flannigan, research chair of wildfire science at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC. “Smokey the Bear had two messages: preventing fires is good and fire is bad. That’s not true. Fire has always just been natural. It’s neither good nor bad.”

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