An industrial category 3 fire blazed through two hectares of cut block on Friday (May 20), igniting already growing frustrations from Ring Creek residents over self-policed logging activity in the area.
The amount of logging in the area is a safety hazard and this proves it, said Ring Creek resident Kim Scobie on Tuesday (May 24), adding that she felt lucky to be alive and safe in her home.
It was a massive fire and the nearest home is less than 250 metres from where the fire stopped. This is exactly the type of situation that we, as Ring Creek residents, have been concerned about.
Between 26 and 40 people live in the Ring Creek area, according to Scobie who has lived there for 14 years, and their tolerance for logging activity in the area is waning.
Fire mitigation is already an issue as the community is outside the municipal boundaries and does not have nearly enough residents to sustain a volunteer fire department.
Its basically every man for himself, said Ring Creek resident Mike Wall.
Several area residents have organized a meeting on Friday (May 27) with West Vancouver-Sea to Sky MLA Joan McIntyre and representatives from the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Mines to discuss the safety hazards brought about by logging activity in the area.
According to Donna MacPherson, fire information officer with the Coastal Fire Centre, the fire was two hectares in size and human caused.
They [the logging crew] were burning some slash and it got away from them, she said.
We sent an initial attack crew of three and then we sent 10 crew people as well to get it back under control and they [the contractor] provided nine personnel as well.
The logging company responsible, Black Mountain Logging, had tried to burn the slash piles earlier in the season, but because of the cool, wet weather, the piles wouldnt ignite, a company official said.
One of the reasons we decided to burn at this time of year is because its been one of the wettest winters, said Black Mountain Logging manager Laren Saindon.
We tried to burn the piles numerous times over the winter and with summer approaching, there was lots of pressure to make sure the piles were dealt with.
Saindon said as the logging company harvesting the block, Black Mountain is also responsible for managing the fire hazard associated with the material thats left behind (slash piles).
He said the most common method to abate the fire hazard is to burn piles under certain environmental conditions that minimize the risk of the fire escaping from the pile and burning the rest of the block or adjacent timber.
The accepted measure of accessing fire risk is called the Fire Weather Index (FWI) and is used to estimate the hazard level of ignition, fire spread, intensity and other factors. Piles are supposed to be burned before the hot summer months when the FWI is at its highest.
In Squamish, Saindon said logging companies also need to consider managing the smoke, and acceptable burning times are controlled by the venting index a measure of how well smoke will travel straight into the sky.
In the case of Ring Creek, the FWI was very low, the venting index was adequate. One of the piles was lit and the smoke vented adequately so the other piles were ignited, he said.
Once the burn started, the wind picked up unexpectedly, fanning the flames. This caused sparks to jump from the piles to the block area where small, fine residues were ignited and caused a ground fire to spread up the hillside.
Scobie said shes surprised the logging crew determined that the weather was appropriate. She said there should be some sort of body overseeing such matters and making those determinations.
The logging company did have a permit to burn but the logging company wasnt issued for that day it was issued over a period of time, she said.
It was on a day when it was inappropriate. It was on a south-facing slope that dries out quickly and they left hundreds and hundreds of long, skinny trees dead from last summer lying on the ground all through the cut block.
This is why I dont think self-policing works. The government has basically given responsibility to the logging companies to police their own actions.
Wall said that is the key issue that will be brought up at the meeting on Friday.
These guys were allowed to log right up to the roads edge, making driving an already treacherous road more dangerous, he said.
And when they were doing the work of getting the logs out of there, they were bringing excavators on and off the road every day and bastardizing the integrity of the road its been over a year and a half and still nobodys gone back to repair the road.
Wall has lived in Squamish for 30 years and said he respects the logging industry, considering it was the foundation upon which the town was built, but too much is too much.
They let them screw up the road and now they almost burn down the neighbourhood, he said. We were of the attitude of, Lets all just get along, but now its getting to the point were everyones saying screw them.
Scobie agrees.
There are a lot of people up here who dont want any logging and I have now become one of them because I have no faith in the government patrolling safety practices, she said.
The logging companies are self-policing themselves for safety and forestry does not oversee anything anymore.
According to Wall, the Ministry of Forests presence in Squamish has declined massively during the past decade, to the point where important decisions about logging in Squamish are being done out of Chilliwack.
Now, some logging companies here seem to have the idea that its easier to beg for forgiveness than do it right in the first place, he said.
That needs to change.
