Quote:
Originally Posted by DoubleF
I spoke with someone many years ago who said something like this fire was inevitable. According to this guy, controlled burns had been decreased significantly in BC due to budget cuts as well as complaints from local residents about the smoke when they did the control burn.
Because of this, fuel sources no longer had natural buffers in between each other via controlled fire consumption, and when something like this goes up, the fuel sources are connected so it can easily burn rapidly over larger distances. He believed the fuel was accumulating year after year to the point where there were too many interconnected sections of landscape that could sustain uncontrollable fires if something were to start burning.
His suggestion was to do more controlled burns and making some significant changes to some landscapes to create "natural" breaks that could help slow wild fires and also create strategic locations for combating fires when they happen.
I don't know how much this is true. But in theory, it does make sense and it also makes more sense to do large scale prevention strategies vs many individual case by case basis for homes and properties. It's kinda like how the City of Calgary did flood mitigation rather than insurance demand all of the homes in the affected areas flood proof their homes.
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There is some truth to that, fire suppression over the past few decades has left many forests older than they normally would be.
Also the pine beetle infestation (not everywhere but certainly in some areas of BC) has left huge swaths of forest dead and getting dryer every year. It's just a matter of time before they go up in flames.