A crew of arborists fell a tree on Aug. 24 in Vancouver. Due to extremely dry conditions in Stanley Park, the City of Vancouver is working to combat the risk of fires by removing dead trees.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
For the past three years, an army of worms has been quietly chewing off the needles of Stanley Park’s Douglas fir and western hemlock, killing at least a fifth of all the trees in the four-square-kilometre oasis sitting atop Vancouver’s downtown.
Climate change has brought milder winters that have stretched this looper moth outbreak into an atypical fourth year. (They usually happen an average of once every decade and a half and last only one to three years.) Even if the moths are soon killed by wasps or have their eggs die off this winter, the top branches of their 40-metre-tall victims are now desiccated and will one day fall onto the floor of this urban forest – creating a large supply of dangerous fuel in the coming years.
During this wildfire season – the worst in the country’s history – firefighters in many Canadian cities have pitched in on the front lines in the hinterland while contending with a new threat: the possibility their largest parks or neighbourhoods might go up in flames as well.
The massive green spaces draw millions seeking respite from scorching sidewalks and apartments. But that foot traffic also raises the risk of humans causing brush or forest fires, which are mostly started by lightning in the wild.
So ensuring that never ever happens within a city’s borders has kept civic parks keepers across the country on edge.
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Three full-time park board crews have been racing to remove dead trees from tourist hot spots in Vancouver.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
In Vancouver, an errant cigarette butt tossed in the wrong direction could ignite the piles of dried needles at the bases of the moth-eaten conifers and start a blaze that would threaten the verdant jewel of the city, which is visited by locals and tourists alike more than nine million times a year. Three full-time park board crews have been racing to remove dead trees from tourist hot spots, and two other teams are running water cannons out of the park’s 65 hydrants to soak brush.
“We’re in a situation now where there’s multiple forces working against Stanley Park,” says Joe McLeod, manager of urban forestry at the Vancouver Park Board. “It’s going to take a lot of resources to get all this work done.”
In Edmonton, an early sign of the destructive wildfire season to come happened at the end of April above the city’s river park system, 2,000 continuous hectares that snake through residential and commercial neighbourhoods. A grass fire was reported around 9 p.m. and burned for an hour and a half before municipal crews put it out, but the downtown Marriott hotel had to be evacuated and its outdoor lounge sustained some damage.
The risk of these wildfires hitting Alberta’s capital will increase by at least 20 per cent over the next three decades and another 11 per cent in the three decades after that, according to an undated and untitled report on wildfire risk commissioned by Edmonton and released to The Globe and Mail last summer under freedom of information laws.
“The Edmonton River valley, which flows straight through the City, is one of North America’s largest urban parkland. It garners a lot of usage by the locals and outside visitors but leads to the potential danger of human-caused fires that could rage out of control because of elevated temperatures and reduced precipitation levels,” the city documents state.
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Vancouver is working to combat the risk of fires in Stanley Park by using water cannons to soak the trees and the ground.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
Early this summer, a fire started in a suburban Halifax backyard, whipped up by high winds through tinder-dry conditions, underscored the urban nightmare scenario. More than 16,000 people had to be evacuated, as the fire in the “wildland urban interface” burned into nearby forests, threatening people kilometres away. Ultimately, 151 homes in the Halifax area were obliterated, and several people narrowly escaped the flames with their lives.
Dave Meldrum, deputy chief of Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, recalls his crews arriving 11 minutes after the backyard fire started that day to find their hoses barely made a dent.
“When the flame height is more than four feet, you’re probably not going to put it out with a handheld hose line,” Mr. Meldrum said, noting the nearby trees 10 times that height were soon totally consumed.
Within minutes, almond-sized embers were flying into yards blocks away, igniting patio furniture and homes with vinyl siding, he said.
Two teams in Vancouver are running water cannons out of Stanley Park’s 65 hydrants to soak brush.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
That type of collateral damage is always front of mind for the firefighters protecting nearly 200,000 people living in the three wealthy municipalities across the Burrard Inlet from Stanley Park on Vancouver’s North Shore. There, three fire departments co-operate to stamp out fires reported on their urban boundary with the ski mountains and year-round tourist draws of Cypress, Grouse and Seymour.
So far this year, there have been four wildfires on these slopes – half the total of eight in the region over the past five years. A blaze in June above the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal shut down part of the highway to Whistler and snarled traffic into Vancouver for hours.
West Vancouver acting fire chief Gord Howard said last week that another of these blazes was averted just before dawn. He said someone reported their neighbour’s back deck engulfed in flames 19 hours after a mid-morning cigarette was discarded the day prior.
Vancouver has closed some trails for visitor safety.Jackie Dives/The Globe and Mail
The patio was mere metres from the forest, according to Mr. Howard, who has been with the department for 40 years.
Mr. Howard said ensuring cigarettes are fully extinguished into water or sand needs to become a year-round habit – not just something done during the bone-dry days of summer. The same goes for homeowners needing to clear piles of leaves and needles from under foliage in their yards, he added.
Bob Gray, a wildfire consultant who works with universities, the federal government and municipalities, said this mitigation work of clearing fuel supplies within a city’s boundaries is crucial to lowering the risk of a disruptive and destructive urban fire.
Hopefully this brutal wildfire season is awakening authorities in big cities, especially in Western Canada, Mr. Gray said. Rural mayors and fire chiefs are already there, he said: “They don’t sleep from March until November – they’re always afraid they’re going to lose their community on their watch.”
With a report from Jana G. Pruden