The Bonnyville Regional Fire Authority (BRFA) are starting to crank up the heat when it comes to their wildfire investigations.
“This year, one thing we’ve been watching is wildfires that are suspicious, and that will be a focus from the Office of the Fire Commissioner,” explained BRFA chief Jay Melvin. “He gave us an indication that there is someone deliberately setting fires in this northeast corridor and we’re watching to see what’s going on, because some of the wildfires we’ve had over the years, there’s no rhyme or reason on why they started, and that’s obviously a concern for us. Moving forward, we’re watching and focusing a little bit more of our attention on once we arrive on scene and determine how the fire started.”
Out of the 97 wildfires they responded to from the beginning of the year up to the end of September, Melvin would estimate “there’s at least a dozen that when we look back on our reports, there’s no indication on how they started. We deem those as suspicious.”
Wildfire season officially fizzled out as of Oct. 31, and aside from the large fire in the Moose Lake area, which destroyed roughly 110-acres in early June, there were few noteworthy events, Melvin said.
“It really depends on the season, some years it can be busy. This year I would consider it a pretty average year. Without the Franchere fire, it probably would have been a little under.”
He added, “In addition to that one, which is still under investigation, that one had been intentionally set, there was another intentionally set fire the same night... The RCMP released that they’ve charged someone for setting that one.”
Between March 1 and Oct. 31, also known as wildfire season, local volunteer firefighters spent anywhere from 500 to 1,000 hours fighting fires.
“You can imagine, just looking at the Moose Lake fire, we had, at times, 18 people out there for anywhere from two to five days,” noted Melvin.
Up until the end of September, volunteer firefighters across the BRFA spent 6,400 hours responding to 480 emergency calls.
“That’s all done by volunteers, so when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, that’s significant,” Melvin expressed.
He noted, extinguishing wildfires can be very time consuming.
“For wildfires, once the fire is out, it’s longer to make sure that it doesn’t start again… That’s significantly different than a house or vehicle fire, which is going to conclude and once you’re done, it’s a very quick turnaround.”
He added, “When it comes to a wildfire, it doesn’t go that quickly, that’s why it takes so much time and heavy equipment, and that’s why the Franchere fire lasted five days.”
Investigating the root cause of the blaze can also require a lot of time.
“Investigating a wildfire is time consuming and expends a lot of resources and you might not even find anything out. But, we do investigate all of our fires and we do know that some of the ones started this year have been deemed as suspicious because we can’t pinpoint what the cause of the fire was,” explained Melvin.
Over the course of the 2019 wildfire season, around 350 fire permits were issued throughout the region.
“That’s a big thing for us. That program has been very successful over the years and it was primarily due to the issuing of fire permits so the fire department doesn’t have false responses,” Melvin noted.
