Human-caused wildfires
And the re-launch of the Alaska Highway News
Some mixed responses on the degree to which the northern lights were northern lighting in the comments on my post yesterday, though it seems to mostly come down to how far out of town you were, which is always the case.
Another piece of followup: As soon as I wrote about the lack of a newspaper in the northeast, it’s the re-launch of the Alaksa Highway News under the management of former reporter Todd Buck:
The AHN shut the doors in October, and I was able to buy the name and the mast head for the AHN in January. As of February, I started my own media company from which I plan to publish a more concise version of the AHN. I have collaborated closely with Rob Brown, former Managing Editor of the Dawson Creek Mirror as well as Trent Ernst from the Tumbler Ridgelines on a new publication which I will be spearheading.
Great news, and good luck to them.
I wanted to talk briefly today about “human-caused” widlfires. Whenever a wildfire is reported as “suspected to be human caused” or whatever, you’ll see a lot of comments like this:
These are the more conspiracy-minded type of posts but plenty of other folks get mad at arsonists, or people being careless with cigarettes, or whatever. But that’s not the only type of human-caused fire. Sparks from a train or ATV lighting a fire is human-caused. Or, as in the case of Fort Nelson’s Parker Lake fire, if wind blows a tree down onto a power line and that starts a fire, it’s also human-caused, even though no humans are around. The B.C. Wildfire Service defines a human-caused fire as literally any fire that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for humans walking this earth, which means the only non-human caused fires are lightning.
Tyler Olsen wrote about this in the Fraser Valley Current last year in an article titled “Why reckless humans aren’t to blame for B.C.’s fire crisis”:
In BC, about 40% of all wildfires are “human-caused,” though that figure fluctuates depending on weather and lightning conditions for any one year.
But we have much worse public data on how, exactly, humans are causing the 40% of fires blamed on people.
That is, in part, a symptom of the BC government’s aversion to sharing public data. But it’s also because the exact cause of every fire in BC isn’t investigated. With more than 1,500 wildfires most years—many in extremely remote areas—intensely probing the cause of each would be incredibly time consuming and expensive. It wasn’t until March of 2022 that the devastating White Rock Lake fire the previous year was officially deemed to have been caused by lightning.
Officials do privately classify fires with more detailed information when it is available, according to a BC Wildfire Service (BCWS) spokesperson. So a report on a fire believed to have been started by campers might classify it as “recreation > camping”. But that information is not publicly posted online and The Current was unable to find a breakdown of various causes and their frequencies in BC—or anyone who could point us in the right direction. BCWS declined to provide a more-detailed breakdown of human-caused fires, saying such information was not readily available. (They noted that time is currently limited because of the fire situation in the province.)
BC’s wildfire service says common causes for human-caused fires include “open burning; vehicle and engine use; industrial activity; fireworks, sky-lanterns, outdoor flame lighting, discarded cigarettes, and arson.” But what percentage each represents is unclear.
Alberta—which releases much more fire-cause information—provides more specific data: last year, about one-third (36%) of all human-caused fires were deemed linked to “recreation.” That was the highest percentage. The rest were split across a variety of broad categories. The next largest classification group was “residential,” with 119 fires cited.
There is a whole lot more to the article, including the role of climate change, which you can read here but I did just want to make note of the fact that Alberta does a better job of sharing more detailed info (Alberta does a better job on sharing info about a lot of things, incidentally, and B.C. could learn from them). I do wish B.C. would take a page from their book and start being a little more granular with the classifications where possible because while I have no hope that conspiracy theorists who believe Trudeau is personally responsible for all the fire will disappear, an absenece of better information doesn’t help.
News roundup:
When do RCMP show up in court to support for people accused of crimes? When it’s their own members accused of the crimes. An overall good writeup from CKPG on the pretrial for the obstruction of justice case, and from the Citizen.
Amidst everything, B.C. Wildfire crews are also tackling the fire at Crescent Spur.
Phil Burton, UNBC prof and a new appointee to B.C.’s Forestry Practices Board, on Canfor cuts.
Foothills was closed after a pickup and garbage truck crashed.
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Send feedback by emailing northerncapitalnews@gmail.com. Find me online at akurjata.ca.