Lytton, B.C. looks to rebuild after wildfire destroys town, but expert warns it could happen again

TORONTO -

As residents look to rebuild in Lytton, B.C., one expert says there’s no guarantee another fire won’t rip through the town, but that there are things that can be done to limit the risk.

Mayor Jan Polderman says that people in the town had just minutes to escape the flames and went off in different directions and now officials are hard at work trying to track everyone down.

“I'm very concerned about the residents,” he told CTV’s Your Morning on Friday.

Town officials are trying to get residents to register at Evacuee Registration and Assistance to help authorities keep track of who is and is not accounted for.

“All they had time for was to grab the keys, grab their pets and a few things and people went in three different directions,” he said.

The fire came on so quickly that there was no time for Polderman to go door-to-door to make sure everyone was safe. He said he saw smoke coming from the south end of town and a strong wind blowing north spelled disaster.

Chris O’Connor, a former mayor of the town and a long-time resident, never expected to see the town go up in flames, despite knowing that it had once burned to the ground in the 1930s.

“I always thought we are fairly safe from this sort of stuff, because there's not huge vegetation around the town,” he said. “It's not like we're stuck in the middle of a forest, you know, lots of clearing around and so I was a bit surprised, but maybe I was too naive.”

But the extreme heat and fire destroying the town hasn’t stopped him and other Lytton, B.C. residents from wanting to go back and start again.

“I guess we're gonna have to rebuild the thing,” he said.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF FIRE

Even as residents hope to rebuild the small town soon, the University of British Columbia’s Dean of the Faculty of Forestry says more fires are likely in the future.

“It [the town] is in a geographically difficult position,” John Innes told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Friday.

That position is what helped it soar to all-time high temperatures in Canada during a late June heat wave that saw temperatures as high as 49.6 C on Tuesday. Being in a valley, there is opportunity for plenty of wind, and it’s wedged between Coast Mountains and Cascade Mountains, creating an interaction between coastal and interior weather systems.

“There are a number of things that, if they were rebuilding, they could do to reduce the fire hazard,” he said. “For example, we can store as little as possible fuel in the area, which obviously is difficult, but it is possible to make a town more resistant to fire.”

FireSmart offers a number of resources and education tools on how to help better protect a residence from fire. It includes guides on safe landscaping, the community and safety checklists.

Not all fires are created equal, though, said Innes. Some fires can be beneficial, but Innes said that in B.C., officials tend to quickly put these fires out before they can do much good.

“A good fire would be a fire that occurs not in the weather conditions we currently have,” he said. “It would burn at a lower temperature. It doesn't necessarily go free, but it does kill a lot of trunks the brush is in a forest area, and that reduces the susceptibility of the forest for more severe fire.”

With these types of fires typically quickly extinguished now, it makes the eventual wildfires burn even hotter.

“The result of that is we get the fuel build up that occurs and with more fuel, the forest is more likely to burn with a very hot fire, and then starts spreading, and that is really bad for emissions, it becomes really bad for wildlife,” he said.

A recent example of this type of fire, said Innes, is what was seen in Australia in late 2019 to early 2020. Those fires resulted in the deaths of 33 people and injured or killed at least three billion animals.

REGROWING FORESTS

Some forests are able to bounce back from a fire quicker than others, but it’s highly dependent on the species of trees that burned in the first place.

“If we're allowing for natural regeneration, many pine trees will regenerate quite quickly,” he said. “They actually regenerate well in an area that’s had a lot of fires, it's actually designed, in a way, to be in an area that burns regularly.”

Their cones will only open and release their seeds when exposed to high heat from a fire, he added.

Other forests, however, take much longer to flourish after a wildfire. The coastal forests of Vancouver, for example, would take much longer to regenerate because they’re not adapted to fires the same way pines are.

If a wildfire took out old growth forests in the province, which Innes says is not impossible, it could take hundreds of years to regrow.

With temperatures in Canada regularly breaking high records, fire seasons are getting longer.

“Fires are starting earlier in years than they used to. And they're extending later in the year,” said Innes. “So we are seeing these fire conditions occurring for bigger periods in the summer than they used to.”

In 2003, a major report made 60 recommendations for the province to better prepare itself for fires and keep communities and wildlife safe. Innes said only some of those recommendations have been implemented.

One implementation was to remove brush and other dry items from forest floors. He said that this was done once and the box was “ticked off” and not returned to but it needs to be maintained regularly as the brush and dead branches and leaves pile back up. A follow-up report by the auditor general of B.C. from 2005 offers a checklist of the recommendations indicating what state of completion they were in at that time. A box is checked off as being “fully” implemented for tree harvesting selection to reduce fuel build up, but Innes says those trees grow back and this needs to be maintained.

“You can't just do it once and forget about it,” he said.

HOW TO BE MORE CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS

For those who look upon these rising temperatures and extended forest fire seasons with fear, there are some individual actions that can be taken to lower their carbon footprint. Innes said that finding more energy efficient ways to run a home is a good place to start. Finding a more fuel efficient way to travel, and reducing meat consumption are all ways that individuals can start to reduce their carbon footprint.

“I think we can moderate our lifestyles without necessarily revolutionizing them,” he said. “Although, many would say that a revolution is necessary.”

But the government needs to be doing more, Innes said.

“That’s even assuming we were to stop all carbon dioxide emissions tomorrow.”

He said that there’s a lot of talk about climate change among political leaders in Canada and around the world, but very little action. Even the controversial carbon pricing in Canada isn’t near enough to make a difference, he added.

“Carbon pricing is still way too low to actually change people's behaviour. So things are going to have to change significantly if we're to even start reducing CO2,” he said.

“We need to learn from the past and understand what is going on, so we can live safely in a world that is changing.”