Entire city-owned properties have been assessed for wildfire risk: city fire chief

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The wildfire risk in Nelson has been completely assessed, says the city’s fire chief.

Jeff Hebert said the wildfire risk reduction program — which falls under the FireSmart umbrella — has had Nelson Fire and rescue crews out to assess all city-owned properties since 2008.

In the last year, some areas had to be re-treated for wildfire mitigation — including the city cemetery, Art Gibbon Park — after a complete assessment of city lands was completed.

“We kept hearing from public, ‘I am fire smarting my property, what is the city doing with theirs?’” he told city council recently in an annual report on the fire service. “So we’ve had all city property assessed for the risk and we are creating maps, dashboards, that will target where our highest risks are with those properties and we are mitigating them.”

In 2023 a report by Bruce Blackwell and Associates and John Cathro warned that around 15 per cent of the city’s wildland urban interface is subject to the threat of wildfire behaviour.

The subject property is a one-kilometre wide section of the forest around the city.

“This, along with other analyses presented and discussed throughout the document, indicate that wildfire is a real threat to Nelson and its wildland urban interface,” Blackwell wrote in the report. Ten years ago Blackwell and Cathro were contracted by the City of Nelson to update the community wildfire protection plan (CWPP). Three years ago the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the province changed the format of the CWPP, to the Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan (CWRP) which places more emphasis on resilience and preparedness.

Blackwell presented an overview of the CWRP, highlighting the coordinated efforts between the City of Nelson, the RDCK and BC Parks that, among other things, identified areas of common interest where wildfire risk is shared.

“Of specific interest is the one-kilometre wildland interface that surrounds the city of Nelson,” said Blackwell.

The first CWPP for the City of Nelson was presented in 2008 and was part two of a larger plan for the RDCK. The CWPP identified fuel treatment areas within Nelson proper that have all been addressed.

An updated CWPP for the City of Nelson was presented in 2016 and identified a number of FireSmart and wildfire reduction initiatives, including ‘areas of interest’ just outside of the Nelson municipal boundary, that present significant risk to Nelson proper, and proposed the city work closely with RDCK, BC Parks, utilities, licensees and others to reduce the risk.