B.C. task force to look at wildfire, climate emergency response

Amid a record-setting wildfire season, the B.C. government has announced it is setting up a task force dedicated to looking at how the province responds to various emergencies.

The expert task force, which will include independent voices from outside of government, will be expected to make speedy recommendations as B.C. continues to cope with more than 400 active wildfires and faces recurring or impending heat and drought emergencies.

Eby says B.C. has “seen a lot of reviews and studies of emergency-related issues,” adding the goal of this panel will be to “avoid the fate of many of those reviews.”

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“To make sure that, as we are learning what we can do better, we are deploying it right away,” he told reporters on Monday.

“The goal here with a taskforce is that we get those independent voices outside of government that assist us in identifying what we could be doing better, but that that work is integrated with the public service, with wildfire service, with the emergency response teams, so that we can put those recommendations, those findings to work right away. We don’t have the luxury of time between emergencies right now in British Columbia. And so making sure that we’re deploying the solutions as recommendations come forward is going to be critically important and is what’s going to set this approach apart from what has been done previously.”

Eby says the speed of implementation will make this task force different from others.

“One of the concerns that I know that’s out there is, you know, we’re still in the wildfire season, but when the rains come in fire-affected areas, the possibility of landslides and slope stability, issues around highways, in 2021, obviously, the atmospheric river impacts that we saw from the rains. And so, making sure that we’re ready and preparing for those emergencies at the same time as we’re learning from the fire season is going to be a huge challenge and I know that the teams are tired, I know people have been working really hard, but it’s absolutely necessary work to support British Columbians,” he said.

Calls for review

The task force announcement comes after the province was once again pressed by some for a review.

Earlier this month, Barrière Mayor Ward Stamer pushed for a third-party assessment of the scope of this wildfire season and how it has been dealt with so far.

“With the unprecedented wildfires throughout our Province in 2023 that are destroying more land, homes, and infrastructure than ever before, it is important for the government of British Columbia to recognize its responsibility in analyzing each fire and their respective crew responses in order to learn and be able to improve future wildfire outcomes,” Stamer wrote in a letter to Eby.

Barrière was devastated by wildfire 20 years ago. The 2003 fires also set records and prompted a major provincial audit, setting the tone for wildfire response and management in B.C. since