Province Declares State of Emergency
Prince George, B.C. – Today’s extreme wildfire behaviour has prompted Victoria to issue a provincial state of emergency.
It was issued tonight by Todd Stone, Minister of Transportation and Minister responsible for Emergency Management BC to ensure a co-ordinated response to the current wildfire situation and to ensure public safety.
The move follows 138 new wildfire starts throughout the province today which have led to evacuation alerts and orders for Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Princeton, 105 Mile House and 108 Mile House not to mention numerous highway closures.
“Given the current wildfire situation and the expected increase in wildfire activity, the Province is taking this extraordinary measure of declaring a provincial state of emergency,” reads a government news release.
“This is an urgent situation and public safety is the top priority. The Province will continue to keep the public informed in this rapidly evolving situation.”
The Province says the state of emergency gives agencies such as Emergency Management BC, the Fire Commissioner, the Ministry of Forests and the RCMP authority under the Emergency Program Act to take every action necessary to fight these wildfires and protect residents and the communities they live in.
The last provincial declaration of a state of emergency was issued in August 2003 to deal with wildfires.
Comments
I would also like to issue my own local state of emergency deceleration from my minds eye.
All hypothetical… but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that if we have a provincial state of emergency then all work in the bush stops. This is a huge problem for this region because if one drives by most mill yards in the region they might have two weeks supply of logs after an extended spring break up period. I seen the weather report and its clear skies for two weeks out… so fat chance the provincial state of emergency is resolved anytime soon.
I see the sawmills running out their log supply over the next two weeks and then undetermined shut downs for the foreseeable future. Until the bush opens up the pellet plants will only last as long as the sawmills stay up and running. If the sawmills have to shut down because they got no logs, then the pulp mills won’t be far behind.
Still early days, but I wouldn’t doubt by the time most people read this that the bush ban will be in effect for workers in the bush….
There is a well defined protocall for what happens with loggers with regards to fire hazard. It is based on days of extreme fire hazard in the area. Forestry has stated that they do not want the bush to be totally void of industry traffic. Often times it is the loggers who are first on site with a small fire. Loggers are trained how to handle first response on small fires in their area and are required to have proper equipment on hand to battle start up blazes.
As for mills out of wood? That has NOTHING to do with a wet spring and everything to do with piss poor management. Canfor has admitted that they made a huge mistake last year with inventory management and have not been able to recover. They hauled into every one of their local mills throughout the spring despite the wet weather and further destroyed forestry service roads to feed their stupidity. L&M Lumber just recently let go a number of managers because they also mismanaged their supplies.
we had a 2 week break up and have been running on rig mats for a month and a half now. Normal 5 hour trip times are now 9-11 hrs.
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