Despite pockets of snow remaining in rural areas, wildfire season is not far away.
With this in mind, Derek Sutherland, Columbia Shuswap Regional District’s team leader of Protective Services, sought and received board approval on signing a one-year contract with 1477556 Alberta Ltd. to provide FireSmart programming in the regional district’s seven rural areas.
The CSRD has applied for $550,000 in grant funding from the Community Resiliency Investment Fund through the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) to provide the service.
“The grant includes provisions to continue work with a FireSmart coordinator to build awareness and capacity within the rural communities to help manage interface fire risk,” wrote Sutherland in his report to the board. “Building FireSmart capacity within communities allows for local level interventions that generate resilience to wildfire and allows a community to recover faster after an event.”
The Community Resiliency Investment program is a provincial program intended to reduce the risk and impact of wildfire to communities in B.C. through funding and educational support.
UBCM, Emergency Services Society, First Nations and the Forest Enhancement Society of BC are working with the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development through BC Wildfire Service, to administer the FireSmart Community Funding and Supports portion of the program for local government and First Nation applicants.
Sutherland told directors that while funding has not yet been approved, CSRD is expecting a positive response to their application by March 31, 2023.
Len Youden, a CSRD volunteer firefighter and lead consultant of 147556 Alberta Ltd., has been providing the FireSmart program to the CSRD over the past four years. He has extensive experience in marketing and delivery of strategic initiatives and has provided CSRD staff with a proposed project timeline.
It is a project timeline that clearly demonstrates his understanding and passion for the work required with this project, said Sutherland.
“The program is designed to provide more staff capacity to specifically promote the program in the Columbia areas and provide an additional wildfire mitigation specialist in the Shuswap to continue to grow the program and provide support to communities that have already subscribed to the initiative,” he added.
Area A Rural Golden director Karen Cathcart asked how the program would apply to her area.
“This work is for all rural areas, but how will it be more inclusive?” she asked. “Will there be a separate coordinator for Area A which is three hours away (from Salmon Arm)?”
Sutherland noted that the FireSmart program has not been as well adopted in Area A and B Rural Revelstoke. He said Youden is committed to expanding the service by hiring a wildfire mitigation specialist for those areas.
READ MORE: Nakusp man in prison following break-in, RCMP discover ‘underground bunker’ on property