A former firefighter’s new tool could help communities plan for wildfires before they start | 24CA News
The Current19:52Thousands evacuated as wildfires roar throughout Alberta
For former firefighter Jen Beverly, the current wildfires in Alberta are a regarding sight.
“The conditions that we have here in Alberta really are unprecedented with the number of communities impacted,” she informed The Current‘s Matt Galloway. “We’ve had this extended drying, and we’re going to need a lot of rain for these conditions to be significantly changed.”
Now the chief of the University of Alberta’s Wildfire Analytics analysis staff, Beverly says she and her colleagues have developed a software that would assist communities higher perceive how susceptible they is perhaps to wildfires.
The software, which is being examined in case research in communities throughout Alberta and British Columbia, measures the quantity of hazardous, extremely flamable vegetation that would act as gas for wildfires, and conveys that data in a colour-coded heatmap.
About 29,000 Albertans have needed to flee their houses this previous week because of a number of lively wildfires throughout the province. 89 wildfires are nonetheless lively as of Tuesday morning, with 24 of which have been burning uncontrolled.
Rebekah Batterink was amongst those that have been compelled to evacuate her house. She had solely been in Drayton Valley, Alta., for a few weeks earlier than the wildfires pushed her out.
“I don’t know a lot of people yet, so for me, I had to really lean into those that were able to connect with me,” she informed Galloway. “I was able to get a ride with a friend that I just kind of met that lived close by.”
“I was just thankful to have, you know, people checking in on me, even though I was new.”
Beverly mentioned it has been an “extremely dangerous time,” as Alberta has had “unseasonably warm temperatures” as of late. But she mentioned she hopes the software her staff is engaged on might help communities plan for wildfires earlier.
“We’re really focused on trying to provide communities with some strategic information and ideas … trying to give them some insight about where there might be particular vulnerabilities in terms of a fire on the surrounding landscape, having a pathway to move into the community zone,” she mentioned.
Mapping out vulnerabilities
Beverly says landscapes are like a quilt work, that includes various kinds of cowl surrounding numerous communities, from lakes and wetlands to mountainous areas.
These landscapes can embody flammable fuels, reminiscent of spruce and pine bushes, which may “sustain very high intensity [tree] crown fires that can loft embers into communities and can be responsible for structure losses,” or extraordinarily flammable dry, cured grass.
By mapping out the place these fuels exist in and round a neighborhood, Beverly says they will predict the path potential wildfires will transfer in effectively forward of the primary ember.
“It’s all dependent on the data that you can get,” she mentioned. “So if we have good information about the fuel and the land cover and what it’s composed of, we can do that with a fair degree of certainty — know that here’s a pathway that a fire could travel along.”
With this software, Beverly says communities can develop higher safety and resiliency plans with common updates, and map out vulnerabilities they may’ve neglected, reminiscent of evacuation routes.
“If you have a community with really limited roads … and if your egress routes happen to fall within significant fire pathways … you have a potential there that your fire is going to cut off your evacuation routes,” she mentioned.
WATCH: Alberta truckers watch and wait as roads shut due to wildfires
Truckers throughout Alberta mentioned they have been left scrambling because of a lack of knowledge from the province in regards to the wildfires.
Once a neighborhood is ready to map out the potential vulnerabilities, Beverly says it could take extra knowledgeable steps to cut back dangers.
“Mitigation measures could include fuel treatments to remove some of the fuels to thin out sort of the most flammable forest stands, and reduce the potential for those high-intensity fires, and reduce the potential for those embers that are so dangerous for structure ignitions,” she mentioned.
“So they can manage the fuels themselves. They could change them and remove some of them, or even take some of the fuels out and convert them to some other vegetation types.”
Produced by Magan Carty, Brianna Gosse and Juliana Konrad.
