Amidst a record fire season, British Columbia tries to get ready for future climate damage

With four hun­dred fires still burn­ing across his province, British Colum­bia Pre­mier David Eby sur­veyed dam­aged in inte­ri­or B.C. on Mon­day and announced the for­ma­tion of an expert task force on drought, fire, floods, heat and oth­er emergencies.

Moth­er Nature has been rough on Canada’s Pacif­ic province in this era of rapid glob­al warm­ing and extreme weather.

Eby is act­ing in a fire sea­son in which 8,687 square miles have already burned, with one fire in north­east B.C. larg­er in size than the Cana­di­an province of Prince Edward Island. The province, once nick­named Canada’s “lotus land”, has been hit with a suc­ces­sion of cli­mate calami­ties in recent years.

“With the pro­found effects of cli­mate change, this year’s unprece­dent­ed wild­fire sea­son has had a dev­as­tat­ing impact on peo­ple in British Colum­bia,” Eby said in a state­ment. “Hun­dreds have lost their homes, tens of thou­sands were forced to evac­u­ate and two hero­ic young B.C. fire­fight­ers trag­i­cal­ly lost their lives.”

The fires of 2023 have hit pop­u­lat­ed and pop­u­lar recre­ation areas, notably West Kelow­na on Okana­gan Lake and the Shuswap Lake region east of Kamloops.

The Bush Creek fire, near spawn­ing grounds of the great Adams Riv­er sock­eye salmon run, has destroyed or sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­aged one hun­dred and sev­en­ty prop­er­ties. Fires have moved rapid­ly, one fire jump­ing Okana­gan Lake.

A tipoff of com­ing con­fla­gra­tions came twen­ty years ago, when a fire spread from Okanogan Moun­tain Provin­cial Park into Kelow­na, a major city in the B.C. inte­ri­or. But experts claim the provin­cial gov­ern­ment, both under Eby’s New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and the (not very lib­er­al) Lib­er­al Par­ty, have failed to take a proac­tive response.

“We already know what we have to do,” Robert Gray, a wild­fire ecol­o­gist who con­tributed to the land­mark Firestorm 2003 report, told the Van­cou­ver Sun. Such mea­sures, famil­iar on both sides of the 49th Par­al­lel, include thin­ning forests, clear­ing under­brush, and remov­ing debris on the for­est floor.

But the task force is being asked to coor­di­nate response to con­trast­ing cli­mate extremes. “This has been the worst wild­fire sea­son our province has faced and while we are cop­ing with a his­toric drought, we must be ready for the risk of severe flood­ing lat­er this year,” said Eby.

“These crises are indeed scary for many peo­ple and gov­ern­ment will be there to adapt and imme­di­ate­ly sup­port peo­ple, no mat­ter what we face, together.”

Togeth­er­ness has not been the rule this sum­mer. The Bush Creek fire, near Shuswap Lake, has brought con­fronta­tions. The B.C. Wild­fire Ser­vice set up road­blocks to keep peo­ple away from the fire region, but numer­ous recre­ation prop­er­ty own­ers defied evac­u­a­tion orders, choos­ing to defend their homes.

Leg­is­la­tors from the oppo­si­tion B.C. Unit­ed Par­ty (the for­mer Lib­er­als) have backed the prop­er­ty own­ers and called for “crit­i­cal sup­plies” to be sent to those who stayed to fight the fire. A trio of law­mak­ers from impact­ed areas said in a state­ment: “These indi­vid­u­als should receive the sup­plies they need to con­tin­ue to pro­tect prop­er­ties and struc­tures in their com­mu­ni­ties: The gov­ern­ment must order an end to this block­ade of vital resources immediately.”

Eby and Min­is­ter of Emer­gency Man­age­ment Bowinn Ma received a look at the Bush Creek fire on Mon­day. The pre­mier acknowl­edges that British Colum­bia and Cana­da have seen lots of reports over the years. The cre­ation of roy­al task forces is a time-hon­ored Cana­di­an tac­tic of punt­ing seri­ous prob­lems down the road.

“British Columbians have seen a lot of reviews, stud­ies and emer­gency-relat­ed issues,” said Eby. “The goal here with the task force is to avoid the fate of many of these reviews, to make sure that as we are learn­ing what we can do bet­ter, we’re deploy­ing it right away.”

The announce­ment in B.C. came as, south of the bor­der, the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion was announc­ing a new record of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phes. With near­ly a quar­ter of the year left, the Unit­ed States has already expe­ri­enced 23 dis­as­ters cost­ing at least $1 billion.

Two recent events made for the record, the wild­fire that destroyed Lahaina on Maui, and Hur­ri­cane Idalia that hit north­ern Florida.

The plan­et has just expe­ri­enced its hottest month on record, with heat waves hit­ting from South­west and Mid­west states in the U.S., to West­ern Europe and the Mediter­ranean, to Chi­na and to Que­bec and the North­west Ter­ri­to­ries of Canada.

Wild­fire sto­ries have ranged from evac­u­a­tion of Yel­lowknife, the one city in Canada’s N.W.T., to tourists flee­ing flames on resort islands in Greece.

Smoke from fires in Que­bec gave New York and Que­bec the world’s worst air qual­i­ty ear­ly in the sum­mer. High water tem­per­a­tures in the Gulf of Mex­i­co caused Idalia to soar from a cat­e­go­ry one to a cat­e­go­ry four hurricane.

A look at what for­mer British Colum­bia Pre­mier John Hor­gan has described as “the new nor­mal.” The June, 2021, heat wave brought Canada’s high­est-ever tem­per­a­ture of 49.6C (121.3 Fahren­heit) to the Fras­er Canyon town of Lyt­ton. A flash fire burned the town and killed two peo­ple sev­er­al days later.

The heat wave was felt everywhere.

One of North America’s pre­mier hik­ing adven­tures is the trail that cir­cles 12,972’ Mt. Rob­son, high­est peak in the Cana­di­an Rock­ies, to reach apt­ly named Berg Lake. The record tem­per­a­tures caused glacial ice to melt. A ram­pag­ing Rob­son Riv­er wiped out bridges and large sec­tions of the trail.

In Novem­ber of 2021, a suc­ces­sion of atmos­pher­ic rivers flood­ed the low­er Fras­er Val­ley, even re-cre­at­ing long drained Sumas Lake.

Bridges were wiped out on the Coqui­hal­la High­way, main route to the inte­ri­or.  Van­cou­ver was, for a time, cut off by land from the rest of Canada.

Yeo­man work rebuilt the Coqui­hal­la bridges in a mat­ter of weeks.

Two years lat­er, how­ev­er, the prob­lem is drought and fires, and smoke blow­ing over much of the province. One long-term fear is that big fires will smol­der through the win­ter. Anoth­er is that trees will not regrow after intense burns, and that for­est land will turn into grasslands..

The province must face what Eby called a “near-con­stant series of emer­gen­cies… as a result of cli­mate change.”

And the pre­mier vowed that response to emer­gen­cies won’t just be top down., say­ing: “We could be doing a bet­ter job of lever­ag­ing local knowl­edge and exper­tise when it comes to pre­vent­ing and fight­ing wildfires.”

As the pre­mier toured the Bush Creek fire zone, evac­u­a­tion orders were announced in north­west B.C., near Fort St. John in north­east B.C., and near Van­der­hoof in the inte­ri­or moun­tain ranges of east­ern B.C.

The fire sea­son is far from over.