Town of Banff and Parks Canada staff practice wildfire emergency drill

Town of Banff prepared for wildfire Officials in Banff practiced a big emergency wildfire drill on Wednesday. Alesia Fieldberg reports.

Officials with the Town of Banff were huddled together in their command centre on Wednesday, monitoring the movements of a large wildfire headed straight towards the community.

Of course it’s just a mock scenario of a fire heading towards Banff but officials say it’s a very real threat and that’s why a team of 150 workers with Parks Canada and the Town of Banff need to hone their skills to defend themselves.

“A fire starts; Parks Canada notices it. Depending on where it is on the landscape, they would notify us and we would become an agency rep within their command post,” says Banff fire chief Silvio Adamo. “Once the fire hits what we call a three day window, the fire modelling that’s been done is based on the 95th percentile of fire danger. That’s almost as bad as it can possibly get. We use those models to create concentric circles around the community.”

At the three day point, if a wildfire looks like it would enter the community, crews would actively work to fight the fire and protect homes. At the two day mark, evacuation orders would be sent out through the local alert system.

“That’s big push here of our sweep of the south side of the bridge, not only to test our evacuation processes but also to make sure there is information to each resident so we can provide timely and accurate information of what dangers are coming down the valley.”

Jane Park, the fire and vegetation specialist for Banff National Park, says the first thing they would do when they notice a fire is send a team out to check out the extent.

“We send out our own Parks Canada wildland fire crews out to assess the fire, see exactly where it is, what amenities and values there are at risk nearby, how close water would be and whether it’s affecting anything imminently.”

She says her crews are already hard at work preparing for the upcoming fire season.

“In the springtime, we are all getting staffed up on our fire crews, we’re getting our preparedness plans off the shelf and doing this sort of thing, having meetings with our agency partners and neighbours, just to make sure that all the plans we have in place are up to date.”

There is a certain amount of wildfire risk to the Town of Banff, Park says, but as agencies work closely together, a lot of progress has been made to make things safer.

“The Town of Banff has done a lot of FireSmart work around houses and then Parks Canada works on the outskirts of Banff but then also the landscape level in terms of larger fuel breaks.”

Adamo says they’ve learned a lot from other recent fires in Alberta and B.C. too.

“We learn from every exercise we do and I hope we do learn from some of the catastrophic events that have happened over the last couple of years. Notification and early evacuation is something we learned from Fort McMurray.”

He adds the sooner that everyone is out of harm’s way, the sooner they can work to protect homes and businesses in the community.

You can access the Town of Banff's Alert Centre HERE.

(With files from Alesia Fieldberg)