ATHABASCA – Following a week that saw nearly a dozen wildfires break out throughout the region, Athabasca County and the Town of Athabasca enacted fire restrictions April 17 and April 19 respectively.
Under both restrictions, new fire permits won’t be issued, and the discharge of fireworks is prohibited. Open fires are not allowed in campsites or backcountry areas, although safe cooking and warming fires are still allowed in fire rings.
The town’s fire chief, Travis Shalapay, gave his Q1 report to town councillors April 18, where he also provided details about the recent spree.
Shalapay described conditions as “exceptionally dry,” due to a combination of a dry fall and a lower level of snow accumulation over the winter.
“The way the melt occurred, a lot of it soaked in, but there wasn’t a lot of moisture in that snow. This past weekend (April 15-16) we had two significant wildfires, and we were seeing a lot of abnormal burning for this time of year,” said Shalapay.
“Hunky, rotten logs in the ground which should be damp and moist were burning, and the insides of poplar trees were burning up in the trees as well … We’re still kind of early for the forest fire season. Typically, in Alberta we have two seasons, and we’ll usually have a grassfire season first until everything turns green.”
In an April 17 e-mail, Shalapay said that the department was hoping that the rain and warm weather forecast for the next few weeks would be enough to “green up” the environment, lowering the risk.
Fire safety tips
Athabasca County fire chief, Brad Straty, says that the biggest thing that people can do to help is to just be diligent.
“Don’t think that it might not get away, or it might be a small fire. Be responsible. We are, at this point, allowing a small cooking fire or a warming fire, but make sure that you have water available (to douse it), that the grass is low, and that there’s no trees hanging over the fire.”
Straty singled out two main places that he believes are a major risk for man-made fires in the current environment: winter burn sites and burn bins.
For the winter sites, the risk is that embers remain insulated in the ground and will spark a fire down the road. “We’re in our critical period right now, because of the old dry grass. Once we get moisture, and things start to green up, the chances of having a fire will decrease, but right now, we’re busy.”
Straty also said that since last April 15, fire departments throughout the county had responded to 11 fires, often with more than one department at each scene.
“Over the weekend, we had nine fires, so the guys are tired by the end of that. As the regional fire chief, it’s a concern because when we get that large of fires, we get multiple departments converging on one fire, and it leaves our county open for other potential fires. We want to minimize the risks, so the departments stay in their areas and are able to get to fires as fast as they can.”
