“I’m glad to hear we have a home to go back to,” said the hiker at Grizzly Lake, only half-joking.
We were headed into Talus Lake and met hikers coming out after a few days off grid. Instead of asking us about the latest plot twists in the U.S. election or who was caught cheating at the Olympics, the conversation with outgoing hikers was all about wildfires. Was the Klondike Highway open? Had the Big One, God forbid, hit Whitehorse?
At the time, the highway was open and it had been raining in the capital city.
When we hiked out four days later, there was indeed wildfire news. A third of Jasper burnt to the ground.
The Jasper fire did not give lengthy advance notice of its arrival, as Yellowknife’s fire did last year. At 8:28 PM on Monday, the Alberta government issued a wildfire advisory and evacuation alert as a “preventative measure due to the number of fires.” It went on to say, “There is no immediate threat to the town of Jasper.”
Just 91 minutes later, the situation had changed dramatically. Residents received an Evacuation Order and were told to take identification, pets and medication and to head west on Highway 16 to B.C.
By Thursday, when it was our turn to hike out and find out what was happening, Jasper was already a smoking disaster area with homes, churches and hotels burnt to the ground.
All of this raises the question of how prepared Whitehorse and its residents are.
Consider a Jasper-style monster fire at the Carcross Cutoff headed for Whitehorse. The Jasper fire was reportedly a crown fire with a huge wall of flame moving as fast as several kilometres per hour while also blowing hot ember showers kilometres ahead.
With a wildfire, layered defences are best.
Our first line of defence is distant fire crews. Then, nearer to the city we have a new government firebreak south of town covering a fire approaching from some angles, as well as publicly funded FireSmarting programs in the city’s forested areas. Then we have emergency fire breaks and fire crews in the greenbelt.
After that, your home’s next line of defence is you. And you may be the weakest link.
Earlier this year, the Yukon Bureau of Statistics randomly surveyed 1,517 Whitehorse households for the Wildland Fire Management Branch.
The results can be interpreted as a glass half empty or a glass half full. They are also consistent with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction study of the Fort McMurray fire done by Alan Westhaver, in which some homes survived the fire with minimal damage while others nearby were incinerated.
On the “glass half full” side, 84.9 per cent of Whitehorse residents had heard of FireSmart. Four in ten had taken some kind of action to reduce risk, with 7.1 per cent having already done a formal FireSmart home assessment. Slightly over half reported that their homes were surrounded by a non-combustible zone.
As for personal readiness for an evacuation, 22.7 per cent said they had a “high level” of preparedness while 59.5 per cent said they were “somewhat prepared.”
The “glass half empty” side of these statistics shows that many Whitehorse residents are not actively managing their wildfire risk. Nine out of ten said they had either never had a FireSmart home assessment or weren’t sure if they had. If you can’t remember having a FireSmart assessment, you probably didn’t have one.
Over half said they had taken no action to reduce wildfire risk to their home. It is conceivable that some of these just bought a fully FireSmarted property, but the majority would probably tick lots of boxes on Alan Westhaver’s list of residential risk factors. Think old pines right beside the house, wooden decks with gas cans and lumber stored underneath, wooden fences, firewood stacked by the back door, and so on.
About four in ten said their home was not surrounded by a non-combustible zone.
One household in six felt “not at all prepared” to evacuate. That’s almost 5,000 people, based on greater Whitehorse’s 2021 census population.
Whitehorse residents also had very different assessments of how much wildfire risk their home faced. There were 17.7 per cent who said “high” or “very high”, with 33.6 per cent saying “moderate” and 43.6 per cent saying “low” or “very low.” This makes some sense as living country residential is very different from a downtown condo. What we don’t know is how many people living country residential or on the edge of the greenbelt incorrectly said “low.”
Don’t feel bad if you are not one of the keeners who already FireSmarted their property and packed their emergency evacuation kit. As they say, while the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago, the second best time is now.
The survey said the biggest obstacles to taking action were money, technical know-how and time. The good news is that many basic measures do not take that much time. And you can get technical tips and even government grants at the websites listed below.
I suggest getting started. Gather the family around a screen, watch the footage from Jasper, and make a family project out of making your emergency kit and FireSmarting your property.
FireSmart Canada: firesmartcanada.ca
City of Whitehorse emergency planning tips and registration for Whitehorse Alert: whitehorse.ca/our-government/community-service/fire-services/emergency-management/
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist and the winner of the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist. His most recent book Moonshadows, a Yukon-noir thriller, is available in Yukon bookstores.
