Click here and learn more about the October 21st FireSmart Cleanup Event to be held in the Commonage neighbourhood.
What is FireSmart?
The goal of the FireSmart Canada Program is to reduce the wildfire risk to property, infrastructure and public safety in the Canadian Wildland Urban Interface (“WUI”) by helping Communities become fire adapted.
FireSmart is based on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Standards and has evolved over 40 years. It is backed by a vast amount of field, laboratory and modelling research.
FireSmart guidelines have proven their legitimacy as measures of hazard and its methods have been demonstrated time and time again to reduce the risk of losses, under even the most extreme fire conditions.
Watch this video for more information and be aware of the priority zones around your home to make them FireSmart compliant:
the risk of wildfire at predator ridge
The City of Vernon identified Predator Ridge as one of the high risk wildfire areas due to its location in the Wildland Urban Interface (“WUI”) in the Vernon Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) Final Report dated July 2, 2014.
The CWPP also refers to the “highest risk wildfire areas in the City of Vernon are located in the forested areas, outside of the urban developed landscape. This is generally found in the southwest of the City, in the direction of Ellison Park, with some significant higher threat areas also located in the northeast and northwest portions of the City (paragraph 4.1).
how did it all start at predator ridge
In August of 2015, the Predator Ridge FireSmart Committee, a sub-committee of the PRCEMC, was formed with 7 residents on the Committee.
On November 3, 2015, the Predator Ridge Wildfire Hazard Assessment Report was completed by Lawrie Skolrood, former Deputy Chief Fire Prevention and Education, and Dean Wakefield, Captain Fire Prevention of City Fire Rescue Services.
In the Assessment Report, it states that “Predator Ridge is located in a wildfire environment. Wildfires will happen-exclusion is not a choice. The variables in a wildfire scenario are when the fire will occur, and where. This assessment addresses the wildfire related characteristics of Predator Ridge. It examines the area’s exposure to wildfire as it relates to ignition potential. The assessment does not focus on specific homes, but examines the community as a whole”.
It further states that “a house burns because of its relationship with everything in its surrounding home ignition zone – the house and its immediate surroundings. To avoid a home ignition, a homeowner must eliminate the wildfire’s potential relationship with his/her house. This can be accomplished by interrupting the natural path a fire takes. Changing a fire’s path by clearing the home ignition zone is an easy-to-accomplish task that can prevent home loss. To accomplish this, flammable items such as excessive vegetation must be removed from the area immediately around the structure to prevent flames from contacting it. Also, reducing the volume of live vegetation will affect the intensity of the wildfire as it nears the home (including removing flammable patio furniture, doormats, etc.).”
In early 2016, the Committee had grown to 12 Members and they all completed a one day FireSmart Training Course led by Lawrie Skolrood in order to understand the FireSmart guidelines and principles and ultimately, obtain their “FireSmart Champion Certificate”. The 12 Committee Members became the “Champions” in the Community to lead FireSmart activities and education events to the residents.
The Committee completed a Predator Ridge Community Master Plan based on the Wildfire Hazard Assessment Report to prioritize items in the report that could be achieved by the residents.
Throughout 2016, the Committee organized numerous education events, speakers on FireSmart, met with homeowners to review risk assessments around their own homes and explained the priority zones so that they could clean their own properties, organized community clean-up events with grant support for food, chipping services, gloves, safety glasses, printed materials, speaker costs, etc. (through the City of Vernon with the SWPI grant funding).
In 2016, the Committee applied to FireSmart Canada and obtained the official “Community FireSmart Recognition for 2016” for Predator Ridge. This designation was made possible from all the hard work of the residents participating in homeowner clean-up, education events and community clean-up events. The official Plaque Ceremony was held at the Predator Ridge Firehall where Kelsey Winter, the B.C. Provincial FireSmart Liaison, presented the FireSmart Committee Members with the 2016 Community Plaque. Mayor Mund and Brad Pelletier from Wesbild were also in attendance at this Ceremony. The plaque has been mounted on the outside of the Firehall for everyone to see (*2017 and 2018 stickers have been affixed to the plaque after renewal applications submitted by the Committee which were approved by FireSmart Canada).
The Committee and residents alike continued to work hard in 2017 and 2018 to retain the FireSmart Community Recognition Status with several education events, video presentation on Era of Megafire, Community and Homeowner clean-up events, speaker presentation on findings from the Fort Mac fire and what we could learn moving forward, etc. The Committee completed the FireSmart Recognition Renewal Forms listing all the events and volunteer hours spent in 2017 and again in 2018 to receive the yearly renewal stickers to apply to the Official Plaque at the Firehall. The Committee also applied for and received some grant funding for the two years through the City of Vernon to cover food and chipping costs for the Community clean-up events.
2021 Predator Ridge Community Recognition Approval
The Committee is hard at work organizing events for the 2019 Season and are committed in their efforts of FireSmart education and clean-up events in the Community. This year the focus will be to encourage homeowners to organize a clean-up with their neighbours on their own properties. After 3 years of focusing on our Community, the City of Vernon has decided this year to allocate FireSmart funding to other neighbourhoods in the hope of replicating the success seen over the past three years at Predator Ridge.
As a direct results of the efforts of the FireSmart Committee, which has worked hand in hand with the active support of Wesbild and the Landscaping Department in particular, landscaping design for all new builds in the Predator Ridge Community now incorporate FireSmart principles, especially within the all important first 10 metres. This compliments the established FireSmart construction norms that have been in place at Predator Ridge since the beginning of the Community.
The Committee encourages everyone to continue and build on the strong FireSmart Foundations put in place in the Community by becoming familiar with the FireSmart Program by viewing the materials on the 2019 FireSmart BC Website at https://firesmart.bc.ca. and FireSmart-101 on the FireSmart Canada Website at: https://firesmartcanada.ca/programs-and-education/firesmart-101/
Thank you for taking the time to read about FireSmart at Predator Ridge and please do your part to help make our Community safer from the risk of wildfires.
To learn more about FireSmart Canada click on the following FireSmart link:
