To: The Ombudsperson for British Columbia, the Chair of the Forest Practices Board, the Premier’s Expert Task Force on Emergencies, the BC Auditor General and Honourable Premier David Eby

We, the undersigned, wildfire suppression professionals and concerned British Columbia citizens, present to you these matters regarding what we strongly believe to be mismanagement by the BC Wildfire Service. We hope that major changes are made to address these concerns in time for next year’s fire season.

Note that many of the following complaints are not new. Independent reviews, dating back to Gary Filmon’s 2003 Firestorm report and the 2018 Abbott and Chapman report, dealt with many of these issues. It is the failure of BCWS and the provincial government to adequately implement the recommendations from these previous inquiries that was a key factor behind the devastation caused by this year’s precedent setting wildfires. 

We identify the following significant failures in the BC Wildfire Service’s approach to wildfire suppression:

1.   Centralized command: There is clear, inescapable, and growing international evidence that operational and logistical decisions should not be made from a centralized command, as the BCWS continues to do. Field operations are hampered by insisting to make decisions at a Fire Centre level, rather than in the field or incident command level where dynamic conditions require immediate action.
2.    Failure to attack wildfires hard and fast: Most of the most destructive fires in 2023, as in previous years, were not effectively actioned fully until days or weeks after discovery. Monitoring or failing to extinguish fires for extended periods allows them to grow exponentially, rendering suppression efforts ineffective and insufficient.
3. Inadequate air attack resources: BCWS is the only provincial fire management program that does not have adequate water bombers for initial attack efforts. The use of a substandard fleet of fixed wing and rotary aircraft, the poor use of rotary wing resources, and an overall lack of a modern, high-capacity fleet of fixed wing and rotary aircraft (capable day and night) results in a vast deficiency of key components for a successful initial attack strategy.
4. Inability to effectively manage heavy equipment: BCWS does not possess the expertise or capacity to coordinate heavy equipment operations. The BCWS does not adequately engage, team with, or pre-organize the experienced forest professionals with the skills to complete these tasks. The BCWS’s inability to identify the needs (including water) and configurations of these necessary task forces, leaves properties and residents without protection from aggressive wildfires. 
5. Refusal to utilize local resources in a meaningful way: As indicated in numerous jurisdictions and within previously published reports, local resources are the most important assets when attempting to contain fires, before they grow beyond suppression capacity. Local contractors, forest tenure holders, and logging companies who are working close to where the fires start and who have precise knowledge of road systems, water sources, natural barriers, local resources, prevailing and diurnal wind patterns, are refused the opportunity to take early action on fires, thus increasing initial attack failures. The BCWS gives priority to out-of-province suppression personnel.  These people have little or no local knowledge, experience or understanding of our forest ecosystems, often take weeks to arrive and are the most expensive crews available. B.C. has the resources and skills to fight its own wildfires with the extensive professionals available. Giving priority to out-of-province people reduces our capacity to fight our own fires.
6. Counterproductive evacuation orders: Government enforcement of evacuation orders is frequently inappropriate and counterproductive and does not recognize the skills, capacity and efforts of many residents who remain to fight the fires in the absence of BCWS personnel.  Often these residents save countless homes and properties, yet they are blocked from receiving supplies, are not allowed to drive on the roads and are denied basic human rights, causing great stress. Sometimes, more resources are poured into evacuation efforts and construction of blockades than are implemented in suppressing wildfires. This could be solved simply by providing training, resources, and support for community protection groups to take responsibility for on-the-ground fire protection as we have done in the past.
7. Inappropriate use of planned ignitions: Planned ignitions conducted in many communities including the southside of Francois Lake in 2018, Monte Lake in 2021, and Gun Lake and the North Shuswap in 2023, have reduced countless homes and properties to ashes. These uncontrolled burns are due to a lack of ability and training to understand and assess the risks and to effectually plan and conduct prescribed fire ignitions. Ignitions are being conducted with no guidelines or policies in place and no accountability for the outcomes. For example, a massive, prescribed fire covering over 2600 hectares with incomplete control lines and no ignition or control plan was conducted in the North Shuswap in 2023, with extreme fire behaviour already exhibited and the predicted strong winds, was completely irresponsible. 
8. Does not value honesty: The BCWS fails to provide accurate and professional information to the people of B.C. regarding wildfire suppression efforts and outcomes. Numerous statements and activities from the BCWS appear intended to mislead the public with claims of work completed that was never done and failed operations that were successful, putting lives at risk and delaying evacuation orders.

Finding Solutions

All indicators point to 2024 as potentially the most volatile and destructive fire season this province will ever experience. We believe that rural and suburban properties, industrial operations in the wildland interface, major transportation corridors, forest timber values, ecological values, rural residents, Indigenous lands and values, and the economy of British Columbia as a whole, will be at extreme risk if immediate efforts are not made to address these concerns.  

In the short term:

It will be key to fund and plan for re-focusing wildfire suppression efforts on an initial attack program that will hit fires hard in high-risk forests. This would include securing contracts for high-capacity water bombers and specialized aerial detection aircraft. The objective would be to be able to hit small fires within the intensive fire protection zone within four hours of fire start up. In addition, the province needs an adequate number of effective initial attack crews, that can be brought in to action small fires and help direct the bombers. As well, a short-term list would include:

 1.     Minimize bringing in out-of-province Incident Management Teams except under the most extreme conditions. Instead, first utilize local resources, as all other provinces do. Engage and cross-train with forest consultants and contractors to immediately double our capacity to manage and fight our own fires. Re-establish the Wildfire Specialist designation so local professionals can be contacted and dispatched quickly to respond to wildfire suppression needs in their area. Recruit and train forest industry staff to work within the Incident Command System. Ensure every Fire Zone in the province has contacted, trained, and prepared a minimum of eight forest professionals and contractors to support them in 2024.

3.     Minimize the import of out-of-province crews whenever possible. Establish more wildfire crews within B.C. by covering their training costs and providing work contracts suppression needs. There is a million hectares of interface area that need wildfire risk reduction treatments. These crews could work on these projects and be available for wildfires as required.

4.     Directly contact and sign up all forestry heavy equipment operators in the province before the wildfire season starts in 2024. Don’t wait for voluntary sign ups and delaying suppression efforts due to incomplete paperwork.  

5.     Re-establish the Fire Warden system to improve local suppression knowledge, community-based communications, wildfire detection and assessment and co-ordination of evacuations and community suppression.  

In the long term: 

The BCWS needs to completely change their approach to fire fighting. Engage both government and independent experts to develop a new plan for all components of fire management including fire planning, prevention, detection, initial attack, big fire management and community involvement. This new wildfire action plan would be costed out with options to consider for budgetary purposes. 

Signed:

Allan Willcocks, RPF (Ret.), Bruce Morrow, RPF, Daniel Quigley, Jim Cooperman, Phil Clark, Stephen Moore, Jennifer Crawford, Simon Hergott, and Ric Careless