Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
Not unlike a snake in the grass, the plucky juniper bush packs a punch when exposed to flame.
“When juniper is on the ground, it’s full of chemicals that are very volatile, so it burns fiercely,” fire technician Alan Westhaver explained on Sunday.
After days of rain, he and Jasper fire chief Greg Van Tighem were finally in the Lake Edith subdivision on July 15 for the 17th annual FireSmart work bee. Westhaver explained over lunch that stout junipers that find themselves caught in a FireSmart zone are quickly dispatched, along with low-hanging branches and trees that have congregated too closely.
“It’s not so much the volume,” he said. “It’s far more important, the location of the fuel. How is that going to allow fire to spread throughout the forest, and up into the canopy of the trees? So we’re being strategic and disconnecting the fuel on the ground from the treetops.”
Leafy, deciduous trees and shrubs are spared per the principles that residents of the first neighbourhood in Canada to be FireSmart certified have internalized, among them Shauna Gifford-Foy.
“The first time through it looked quite a bit different,” she said, adding the Sunday workday was the 17th annual event that featured a lunch and presentations from fire experts, but there have been a total of 28 work bees over the years. “When we started, it was very, very thick so now we’re trying to go back to the open grassland that it was.”
Parks Canada and Jasper fire personnel go in the area to be worked on the day before and cut down trees and do other prep work for the volunteers, which at Lake Edith tend to number more than 40 on any given project.
“Then we pull the juniper bushes, drag the cut trees to the road and cut all the low-hanging branches,” she said. “Anything that might fire-ladder. We thin the small, knee-high spruce. We work at it section after section. After next year, we’ll probably have been around the lake twice.”
Picking up steam
On Tuesday and Wednesday about a dozen town and Parks employees worked to become certified as FireSmart representatives capable of taking responsibility for a section of town and mobilizing work like what took place at Lake Edith on the weekend.
These “reps” in turn will recruit a “champion” for their neighbourhood - Van Tighem expects there will be about eight divisions in Jasper - who will do the legwork of organizing juniper bush assassinations with groups of residents and individual homeowners.
Sitting in the shade of his “office” on the patio of cabin 34, Van Tighem, also the director of protective services for Jasper, said the department is about issue a tender to extend the mechanical logging work in and around the townsite planned for this winter.
“My plan is to keep this ongoing for as long as we get the funding,” he said, “and just keep pushing further out.”
In the meantime, he said Lake Edith should be emulated, and not just for the view.
“It’s an extremely engaged group of people out here,” he said. “They’ve taken the FireSmart principles and work bees very seriously for more than 20 years. That’s what makes FireSmart work is when you have a group of people engaged. It kind of builds up the hype.”
He plans to at least triple the number of community FireSmart work days this year, from one to three, or more depending on how the champions do. Last year residents swarmed a strip behind the Caribou co-ops in Cabin Creek, this year they’ll probably target plot GB next to the planned bicycle skills park where some thinning has already been done, and the houses across Connaught Drive if the residents are keen.
The second joint Parks-municipality wildfire information session takes place on July 19 at 7 p.m. at the Sawridge. It will feature information on both evacuation preparedness and property protection.
Speakers scheduled to appear include Jasper National Park superintendent Alan Fehr, Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, Van Tighem, Parks Canada national fire management manager Jeff Weir, resource conservation manager Dave Argument, fire management officer Tanya Letcher, fire technician Brett Haug and Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) field officer John Swist.
“When and if we do get the wildfire, it’s properties that are FireSmart that are easier to protect and save,” Van Tighem said. “It takes a lot of load off the firefighters because they can apply the resources elsewhere. They don’t have to start cutting down trees and removing juniper bushes, shielding up things that could catch fire. If it’s done ahead of time, it makes a big difference.”
