Premier to Tour Wildfire Ravaged Areas Today
Monday, August 28, 2017 @ 8:57 AM
Prince George, B.C. – Premier John Horgan, along with Minister of Forests Doug Donaldson will be heading to the Interior today to tour areas devastated by wildfires.
The itinerary has the Premier visiting the Kamloops Provincial Regional Emergency Operation Centre followed by a tour of the Cache Creek Resilience Centre, meetings with the Mayor and Council of Cache Creek and meeting with the Ashcroft First Nation Chief and Council.
The visit will include a ground tour of the fire damage in Ashcroft and an aerial tour of the Philpott wildfire.
Since April 1 this year, 1,123 wildfires in the province have burned an estimated 1,061,911 hectares.
Comments
Its almost as bad as the last time the NDP were in office, and they let the pine beetle destroy our forests.
Please elaborate. What is “It’s”?
Very surprised Weaver isn’t going with them.
Hopefully what they see will have a serious impact and mistakes of the past will not be our future.
Weaver has been pretty much cut out of this coalition government (or alliance as they call it).
Horgan got what he wanted from Weaver, now Weaver is a shadow on the wall, maybe.
I suspect Weaver is showing as clearly as he is able that he is running an independent course so that when the next election comes around he will be able to say he did not agree with a lot of what the NDP did and that his independent criticism of them shows his party should replace the Liberals as the Official Opposition.
You are suggesting the wildfires are the NDP’s fault?
I am not friend of the NDP’s, especially the current situation they are in, but to blame the NDP for the wildfires is ridiculous.
Blame for the MPB will continue as to whether prescribed burns could have slowed the epidemic as recommended. That being said I did see one study that said the maximum fuel load on the forest floor would be 20-50 years after the little bastards had passed through. That window is starting to open so one could expect that this year’s fire season is not a one of, especially given the dryer springs and hot stretches in summer with little or no rain.
I want to see what this City will be doing about our forest periphery.
Looking at aerial images of Cranbrook Hill forested areas, the entire Miworth area, the North Nechako benchlands, etc. a wildland fire starting west of there and flamed by westerly winds will not stop until it reaches the escarpment along Foothills and burns the trees off the face of that, and spreads into housing developments adjacent to the forested hill.
I want to see what the City has done about that as far as making a determination of whether mine is a realistic assessment or not. If it is found to be a potential risk, then I want to know what they will do to mitigate that threat.
I think we are in a situation which is close to that in Utah, that communities have to take care of themselves with such assessments because the province is not about to undertake that study.
Once we have a fire assessment in place, we can seek financial help from the province to began implementing a mitigation program.
Gopg, I agree with you wholeheartedly, been wondering for a while why nothing has been done around the city. Will we be another Fort Mac?
Do we have the “It’ll never happen here” syndrome?
Go to Heritage Elemenary and look at Cranbrook Hill, whole whack of dead standing on the side hill, and the top? Well, that would be quite the fire.
“I want to see what this City will be doing about our forest periphery.”
Given the inordinate size of our civil service, I real hope someone somewhere is doing some predictive modelling. Can the forest around PG go up like that around 100 mile or does our longer winter and rainier summers factor into it? etc., etc, etc.
The pine beetle epidemic started in the Caribou long before the NDP were in power. Get your facts straight before shooting self in foot.
Cheers
What is at issue is that the NDP were warned and did nothing to eradicate.
That is not an issue. Never was. There are separate pine beetle epidemics in the USA, especially in Colorado and Utah.
The only people who blame the Tweedsmuire park outbreak are those who have no understanding of forestry, beetle outbreaks, fire control, etc.
If you want to blame any forest practice, blame the practice of fire control. A natural forest burns. Since we started to control forest fires, the average burned land has decreased by 90%.
That is not sustainable, unless we provide the requisite fire breaks in the forest stands as well as around rural structures and urban peripheries.
The relatively new practice of deactivating roads also doe not help. It makes access to fires difficult and reduces firebreaks. In fact, it may be better to clear the land immediately adjacent to forest service roads to create a wide enough fire break. Even planting something different than mono cultures could help.
Too bad he thinks there were/are no serious fires beyond the Kamloops are. I quess the fires around Quesnel and NORTHERN interior don’t really count.
Area. darn spell check.
This is deep BCLiberal country.
The Southern Interior is better potential NDP country.
Besides, that is where the action, as far as wildfires go, is at the moment.
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