On my way home from work Tuesday (April 2), I saw a plume of smoke rising from the trees across the river. Naturally, I followed it.
It may have been nothing, but Chilliwack’s grass-fire-gone-rogue from earlier in the day made me want to be sure. As I drove through the winding roads in Popkum — the smoke took me closer and closer to the Cheam Wetlands — I thought of all the other fires that had been sparked during the warm, dry weather this spring.
Grass fires had been peppered throughout the region near the middle of the March. At the end of the month, two wildfires were started in the Okanagan, one reaching about 250-hectares. And only one day before my drive through Popkum, a 15-hectare fire had broken out near Squamish. It is believed to be human-caused.
RELATED: Wildfire breaks out northeast of Squamish
In the heat of summer — or in this case, spring — our forests have enough to deal with, with lighting strikes causing 60 per cent of wildfires in B.C. in an average year. The tinder-dry foliage ignites with the heat from the bolt, and the flame can become a raging blaze with little effort.
The remaining 40 per cent of wildfires should be completely preventable. Discarded cigarettes are, of course, a major concern in the summer, but campfires, off-road vehicles and other sources of man-made heat are all possible fire starters.
When I finally found the source of the Popkum smoke — after passing the unperturbed Popkum fire hall — it was clear nothing was amiss. The smoke had billowed up from a bonfire of brush and broken tree limbs, likely cleared from someone’s property and burned before the summer bans set in. A man was standing by the fire, watching it.
I drove home, thankful that I wouldn’t need to cover a raging wildfire on the edge of our community.
But, it’s only April. The real wildfire season is coming. And we all need to do our part to keep the land around our communities safe from preventable fires.
-Grace Kennedy, editor
grace.kennedy@ahobserver.com
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