By Brenda Ann Babinski

After what has been the hottest summer in recorded history, the City of Kimberley is doing double duty on the fire prevention front.

At the September 28 City of Kimberley council meeting, the Fuels Management Update submitted by Kimberley Fire Chief Al Collinson was accepted. Councilor Darryl Oakley thanked the fire chief for writing the report and requested that the next report include information about what should be done to the trees directly behind peoples’ homes that may require thinning.

Oakley went on to state his concerns regarding the ever-changing state of the surrounding forests. “To add to the complexity of all of this is the dynamic of the forest regeneration plan is something we worked on seven or eight years ago. Now it has grown up. It’s like a moving target all the time.”

Later in the meeting council approved a motion to send two separate applications to the Union of B.C. Municipalities.

The first involves the inclusion of newly incorporated city-owned lands into the Community Wildfire Protection Plan No. 1, which deals specifically with city-owned property. This amendment will include former Teck lands that are not currently covered in the CWPP #1.

The second application to UBCM is seeking an operational fuels management treatment of the lands known as the Richardson Cut. This is a 27-hectare property located near the northwest corner of the Kimberley Nature Park and just east of the Nordic Trails.

Mayor Don McCormick was quick to praise the continuing efforts at fire prevention.

“There has been much ado about the fire hazard and what we are going to do about it. In the past seven years the work done has been phenomenal; absolutely phenomenal. We are a very progressive community when it comes to dealing with that fire interface hazard.”

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