BRFA readies as much as they can for early and active wildfire season

An aerial picture of the Moose Lake wildfire in 2019: M.D. of Bonnyville.

It’s an early start to the wildfire season, and with the extremely dry conditions, there is concern this could top last year as the “busiest wildfire season on record.”

Triggered ten days earlier than normal, the Alberta government announced on Feb. 20 wildfire season is in effect due to warmer temperatures and below average precipitation this winter.

“We knew going into the winter that we needed some pretty heavy snowfall, and we just didn’t get it,” BRFA regional fire chief Dan Heney told Lakeland Connect. 

That led to some scrambling to get the M.D.’s Fire Guardians in place quicker than normal, plus begins fire permit season.

But so far, it’s been an “unprecedented” year for the BRFA in terms of calls. Station 5 in Bonnyville has responded to 70 calls alone in 2024, more than one a day, and a lot more than last year.

“It’s been a very busy year. I know that Cold Lake’s ahead of schedule too. There was a couple of small grass fires in there. But none of those have been big time grass fires. These have been structure fires, motor vehicle collisions, all of the stuff that you expect to come at any point in time. There just seems to be a lot of them,” said Heney. 

There isn’t much preparation they can do. But they can remind the community of best practices.

“Large non essential fires will not be getting permits. We haven’t cancelled any current permits, but we’re asking people to pay attention. Normally if they were to do a burn over the winter, they don’t have to do a lot of checking up on it. But right now the winds are up and I can already see coming back from a call earlier today that there’s a couple of fires out in some fields south of Highway 28 that are smoking pretty heavy, because the winds have picked up and are blown the right way. 

“We’re asking folks that have done burns over the winter to go check them make sure that they’re still out, spread them around a little bit, get some water on them and then that they continue to to follow the rules of the M.D.’s bylaw for doing burns. Clean dry wood only — those burns aren’t meant for you to burn up all of your garbage that’s been kicking around your acreage or your farm. Things like tires, pails of oil, and school bus seats, and other types of things, aren’t things that you should be looking to burn in your burn ,whether it’s permitted or not.” 

The province says if passed, Budget 2024 will include funding to hire 100 new firefighters, which will result in five additional 20-person crews.