With wildfire season officially underway, Whitecourt and Woodlands County residents are being asked to familiarize themselves with the FireSmart program offered by the federal government.
Experts say the FireSmart program is the best way for residents to prepare their properties for the upcoming wildfire season.
“FireSmart is a program that helps people make their properties more resilient to wildfires,” says Josee St-Onge, Provincial Information Officer with Alberta Wildfire. “We know that we can’t prevent wildfires. It’s a fact of life for people who live in forested areas, so we encourage everyone to look into the FireSmart program and follow those resources to start FireSmarting their homes.”
St-Onge says there’s lots of little things that people can do to get started now so that if we do have another busy wildfire season they’re more resilient to a possible wildfire:
- Getting rid of dry vegetation around your property
- Trimming trees
- Getting rid of dried brush and undergrowth
- Keeping eaves cleaned out.
St-Onge says Wildfire Alberta is also asking residents to double-check areas they used for burning during the winter to make sure everything is fully extinguished.
“We want to ask residents that took advantage of the winter months to do some burning on their property, to go back and look at those sites and make sure that everything is extinguished. When things are this dry, it’s very easy for a fire that’s been smoldering in the ground to wake up and spread to the surrounding vegetation. If anyone has been doing any burning over the winter, now is the time to go back, dig it up a bit, make sure everything is out and really soak that fire so that it’s completely extinguished. That will help prevent it from spreading into surrounding vegetation once we see some warmer and windier conditions.”
Whitecourt residents are also being asked to be extra vigilant when it comes to reporting wildfires this summer.
“One way that we rely on the public is also to report wildfires,” Says St-Onge. “We do have a very strong detection system in Alberta but there’s a lot of people that will see a wildfire possibly close to their home or around a roadway and they can call it in and we can be there as fast as possible. The public plays an important role in reporting wildfires as well as preventing them”
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To report a Wildfire call 310-FIRE (3473) as soon as you see it.
More information on the FireSmart program can be found here.
