Mission’s forestry department is making preparations to endure another wildfire season in 2024 while recovering from the last one.
Director of Forestry Chris Gruenwald says July to late September is a stressful time. The Mission Municipal Forest has been forced to close twice since 2021 due to wildfire risk, including once last summer. The 2023 shutdown included the closure of the BC Hydro boat launch.
“As you can imagine, that was not a popular decision but I think it was the correct one,” Gruenwald said.
Community safety is a top priority for forestry and Gruenwald says forestry has a comprehensive strategy to deal with wildfires over the summer months of 2024.
Council recently approved $100,000 in temporary funding to hire a FireSmart Coordinator before the start of the 2024 wildfire season. The funding was taken from the Forest Legacy Reserve and will be returned once UBCM approves the city’s FireSmart application.
A fire warden is also brought in every year to complete patrols in collaboration with Mission Fire Rescue Service and the BC Conservation Officer Service.
Meanwhile, a fuel reduction project in Steelhead to prevent the spread of fires into the area should be finished by March.
“In each of the last two years, we’ve had a small wildfire break out as a result of careless behaviour. So we’re working with the province on fire-smarting both individual properties but also fitting and fuel reduction projects within our forests to help reduce the spread of wildfires [if they] were to break out in a rural neighbourhood such as Steelhead.”
The municipal forest suffered one wildfire last year at Hunter Hill near Cannell Lake in late July. The blaze was 2.5 hectares in size and was officially out after three weeks.
It broke out into a small portion of mature standard trees but the bulk of the fire affected 10 to 15-year-old trees. Gruenwald says the province will provide funding to buy trees and hire planters to help the area recover from the wildfire.
“It certainly could have been a lot worse if it got into our mature stand at a large scale … so we’ve been fortunate so far. We haven’t had a large-scale fire in our mature timber, but I mean, there’s potential to really impact it,” Gruenwald said.
Mission doesn’t have problems with naturally caused wildfires, Gruenwald says.
“The issue is human-caused wildfires — you know, people are having campfires and being irresponsible that way,” he said.
Extreme weather patterns are proving challenging for forestry but the city will continue to take a vigilant approach.
“If you look at the Lower Mainland — from Mission, east — there was a lot of wildfires all over the place. You think about Harrison, you think about the east side of Stave — and we had one small fire but we didn’t have a ton and I think that was because of our approach.”
READ MORE: Wildfire near Cannell Lake in Mission officially out
