SUNDRE – In the costly fallout of devastating wildfires that over the past number of years have caused extensive damage, the risk of forest fires has risen to the forefront of many rural communities that are situated near forests.
Sundre – a gateway to the West Country with a mill operating next door – is certainly no exception. In the fall, Town of Sundre officials invited representatives from West Fraser Sundre Forest Products to share some insight on what measures the company takes to stay one step ahead of potential disaster.
Tom Daniels, woodlands manager, and Jason Foote, general manager, addressed council on Feb. 10 during a regular meeting.
“Fires can have a dramatic impact on any community,” Daniels said.
“It’s certainly a timely topic when you look at what happened in Jasper and what’s going on in California,” he said.
Looking farther back in time, he said historical records dating back to the late 1890s when the Dominion of Canada was doing a lot of surveying in the region show how forest fires have shaped the ecosystem.
“When you talk about old growth in this area, it really isn’t apparent at all because of the natural landscape being changed by fire,” he said.
West Fraser has held a Forest Management Agreement with the province to manage timber resources in the region since 1992.
“The last time we had a big fire in this area was in 2001,” he said, referring to what was dubbed the Dogrib Fire, which started in the general vicinity of Ya Ha Tinda.
“It was a hunter having a tea fire and he left the fire burning while he went off and did his business and didn’t put the fire out. That fire started up and it blew up,” said Daniels, adding the blaze burnt through some 11,000 hectares in a roughly 12-hour period.
“They were talking about evacuating the community of Bearberry at the time,” he said. “Luckily, Mother Nature kicked in – this is on October 16 – and we had a fairly heavy snowfall, so it put that fire out naturally.”
Nevertheless, an estimated $4.5 million worth of logging equipment was destroyed and many free-roaming horses along with dozens of head of cattle perished, he said, adding there were no human casualties.
West Fraser’s operations in the region also include a mill by Rocky Mountain House, and Daniels said provincially managed areas such as Public Land Use Zones are not within the company’s purview.
“There’s no allowance for commercial harvesting in there, although there is harvesting allowed for things like older timber, diseased, insects; those kind of things,” he said.
“We are talking with the province about what we might be able to do out there,” he added.
More recently, there was this past summer’s Upper Cripple Creek Fire that started west of the company’s forest management agreement (FMA) area. That fire burned almost 7,000 hectares, of which approximately 1,400 hectares were within the FMA.
“We were in there harvesting in the early 2000s and we had reforestation occurring on those areas and then the fire came in and blew through there,” he said.
“Those are the most concerning because we’ve already invested 20 or 30 years of reforestation into those (areas) and now the clock gets set back to zero.”
West Fraser had expected those stands to be on a trajectory to be ready for harvest within 70 years, he said.
“That’s not going to occur now. It’ll be about 90 years because that’s the average rotation before we’ll be able to get in there and harvest.”
As well, he said the fire left a lot of exposed soil that can have “huge implications for runoff into watercourses” such as the nearby North Saskatchewan River water system.
Recognizing wildfires cannot always be prevented, proactive preparedness planning can at least mitigate damage.Companies like West Fraser pay the province what’s known as a holding and protection charge, which is an annual fee determined by the size of the area within the FMA. Those payments help fund provincial efforts to protect an area from fires, he said.
As part of the agreement, the company also commits to ensuring that all staff and contractors are equipped with firefighting gear during fire season with procedures in place in the event a fire breaks out, he said, adding there have been instances when controlled brush pile burns later spark back up.
“We have started fires, there’s no doubt about it … we action those on our own,” he said.
Any other fires that are started either naturally such as by lightning or human negligence such as campfires getting out of control are the responsibility of province.
“If we’re first on scene then we'll certainly action the fire as quickly as we can, and then typically the forest service would come in and relieve us from those duties,” he said.
“If we’re not first on the scene, we may get asked to assist.”
Every 10 years, the company also reviews its forest management plan to reassess the risk to places such as Burntstick Lake. Additionally, the company works in concert with the province to determine whether harvesting should be scheduled in those areas to reduce hazards, he said.
And although the details have not yet been released, the provincial government is also developing a new strategy that will involve identifying priority communities across the province and considering ways to fire smart them, he said.
“We had heard that they were going to try to immediately action those, including starting this winter – I don’t think that’s even possible to get that going,” he said. “But certainly the province has a strategy and I believe we’ll be hearing more about that fairly quickly.”
Mayor Richard Warnock asked if there had been any discussions about the possibility of establishing a fire guard along the borders of Sundre or Rocky Mountain House.
“No, and that’s what we’re waiting to see from province, is they’ve identified priority communities,” said Daniels.
“I would say that probably Sundre is not on that list, just because it’s mainly private land that’s around the community and I don’t think the province is talking about doing anything there,” he said, adding the province is mainly looking at Crown land.
“Rocky Mountain House might be in a different situation. But I think they were looking more at communities like Whitecourt and further north where certainly they’re surrounded by Crown forests.”
