KREW KUTS: Fire “Prevention” 2024
By Bernie Krewski
HISTORY
When did we first begin to say that fires so essential to human existence needed to be “prevented”? The first reference to “fire prevention” in my quick search of Canadian newspapers surfaced in The Globe (Toronto) on April 23, 1880. The news report cited a fire in Hull Quebec, across the river from Ottawa. It stated: “Unless the conflagrations like the recent one are guarded against the future, it will not pay to run up cheap structures. Therefore, a substantial expenditure on fire prevention is a necessity for a wooden town, where houses almost cover the ground.” That theme, fires in buildings, prevailed far into the twentieth century.
In Alberta thirty years later, fire prevention continued to be a relatively insular and local matter. The Provincial Fireman’s Association held its first annual convention in Calgary on August 4, 1909. Fire Chief James Smart of Calgary pointed out that fire inspections are as important as fighting actual fires. They demand weekly inspections of the electrical wiring of hotels and theatres, adding that firemen need to be stationed in theatres for every performance. He also noted: “Fire departments may be compared to the cavalry and the artillery arms of military service, moving quickly here and there.”
By the end of the last century, the basic thrust of fire prevention practices in Canada remained much the same – an emphasis on buildings. Oyen’s major fires in January 1927 and May 1951, for example, involved several businesses on Main Street.
The conventional function of fire departments in the past was to educate the public on the necessary precautions required to prevent potentially harmful fires from occurring. Safe practices such as installation of smoke detectors and sprinkler systems were given great importance. The main audiences for fire prevention programs were students, elderly and disabled people, landlords and caretakers, hoarders, and smokers.
Canada has 10% of the world’s forests so wildfires have not been unusual. About 8,000 such fires occur every year across this country, usually regarded as occurring more frequently in rural areas.
TERMINOLOGY
By the beginning of this century “fire prevention” had become a century-long popular term, an everyday cliché. Although essential to maintain public awareness, its focus was narrow, grounded in the past, failing to encompass recent developments in technology, science and the realities of contemporary society. Prevention now is a much larger and more complex issue. Something new and different, potentially more dangerous, has overtaken much of our world.
We also need to be reminded that for hundreds of years, fire has been an integral factor in our lives as human beings, shaping our civilization, culture, and habits. It has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, provide light, and power the machines driving many of our essential industries. Fire has energized, empowered, and enriched us!
Also important to note is that 3 billion people in this world still cook and heat with open stoves. I observed this first-hand in 1993 while working on a medical team in a remote area of northern Guatemala where people still lived in houses made of sticks.
While effectively using fires to benefit our lives and learning to control its risks, we developed a rather narrow view of fire prevention. Unaware for most of us, environmental circumstances dramatically changed during the first few years of this century.
21st CENTURY
Chisholm is a hamlet located southeast of the town of Slave Lake. A major forest fire began burning on May 23rd, 2001, and was not contained for over a week. It destroyed ten homes and burned 120,000 hectares of timber, three times the size of the city of Edmonton. An investigation conducted by the province concluded that the fire was caused by a CNR train. In a news report a year later, fire officials said: “it will go down in history as being one of the most destructive fires in Alberta’s history.”
A large wildfire on May 14, 2011, originated 15 kilometres outside of the town of Slave Lake, aided by 100-kilometre-per-hour winds, forcing the complete evacuation of the town’s 7,000 residents. At that time, it was regarded as the largest displacement of people in the province's history. The fire destroyed one-third of the Slave Lake community (374 properties destroyed and 52 damaged) and another 90 buildings in the surrounding area destroyed or damaged.
John Vaillant’s “Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast” (2023) provides stunning details on the fire that struck Fort McMurray on May 3, 2016, resulting in the evacuation of 88,000 residents. It is “heavy” but essential reading for anyone interested in fire prevention.
“Fire weather,” as he describes, is the dynamic relationship between temperature, relative humidity and the moisture content present in local fuels, that is, anything that burns. Fires burning in these conditions have their own weather systems – the presence of tornadoes for example within the fire system itself. These circumstances are rare and seldom have been seen before.
Vaillant explains why homes in Fort McMurray went from ignition to complete destruction in five minutes. They are made of oil-related products – vinyl siding is made of petroleum as is flooring, veneered furniture, polyester fabrics, plastic appliances, and food packaging.
He writes about the science of urban and forest fires – wildland urban interface (WUI) where the forest meets tree-lined sub-divisions like the recent fire in Jasper National Park. More controversially, he links the Fort McMurray fire with the oil and gas industry and climate change. “What I don’t think we have learned,” he says, “is to meaningfully connect our dependence on the fossil fuel industry to its impacts on our climate.”
Fort McMurray officials, Vaillant observed in his interviews, had difficulty assimilating matters beyond their own personal experience, far too hesitant about its seriousness - like most of us. This is what he calls the “Lucretius Problem” – the Roman poet and philosopher who observed we can’t imagine a river any bigger than the biggest river we’ve personally seen.
Then on June 30, 2021, a wildfire triggered by a passing freight train destroyed much of Lytton B.C. causing two fatalities, described in “Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism and Life Before the Fire” (2024).
FIRE PREVENTION NOW
Fire prevention cannot exist if it is not reimagined, deepened, expanded and brought into line with contemporary climate realities.
All of us need to shift our focus and return to being collaborators with the planet rather than simply being exploiters and users.