report on the recent firesmart community series

By Jinhan Xie
I was fortunate to attend the recent FireSmart Canada’s Community Series held October 2nd-4th, 2018 in Fort McMurray, Alberta, thanks to student funding provided by the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta (FRIAA). The Community Series conference involved a diverse group of participants including community members, forest companies, industry, government, and scholars, who share the responsibility to face the challenges of wildfire threats to our communities. 

According to FireSmart Canada, “FireSmart is living with and managing for wildfire on our landscape” and includes seven disciplines to help us address the threat of wildfire: education, vegetation management, legislation and planning, development considerations, interagency cooperation, emergency planning and cross training. These disciplines target decreasing the risk of community loss and mitigating the negative effects of wildfires. In this FireSmart Community Series, speakers from various organizations illustrated their respective roles across the seven categories of FireSmart disciplines and presented the progress of their FireSmart programs in the Wood Buffalo region.
 

A member of our research team, Jen Beverly, presented at the conference to explain the process of wildfire exposure assessment, which is designed as a planning tool for identifying the values at risk and prioritizing the resources to mitigate negative effects of wildfire occurring in communities. You can view the presentation here. 
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In addition to conference presentations, field trips were arranged at the event to show participants vegetation management projects in the Wood Buffalo area. My photo below shows a 40-meter fuel break located behind residences and required after the Horse River Fire in 2016.

The two photos below show vegetation management projects implemented in Ermine Crescent in 2008. The 2016 fire stopped at the fuel break (on the left side of the second photo below), which successfully protected the residence on the right side from wildfire.

Overall, the Community Series conference emphasized that FireSmart is a shared responsibility that involves government, researchers and industry. Community members also play a key role through proactive measures like building their house with less combustible materials and removing hazard fuels from around values. By following the FireSmart principles and guidelines, wildfires have a better chance of being controlled in wildland-urban interface areas with less damage to human properties.
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