High Fire Hazard Rating

Our local Fire Hazard Rating has been raised to HIGH. Starting Wednesday, July 24th all high risk activities must shut down by 1:00pm, followed by a two hour fire watch. 

In the Wildfire Regulation, high risk activities mean each of the following: 

(As per Wildfire Regulation consolidated July 13, 2006)

(a) mechanical brushing; 

(b) disk trenching; 

(c) preparation or use of explosives; 

(d) using fire- or spark-producing tools, including cutting tools; 

(e) using or preparing fireworks or pyrotechnics; 

(f) grinding, including rail grinding; 

(g) mechanical land clearing; 

(h) clearing and maintaining rights of way, including grass mowing; 

(i) any of the following activities carried out in a cutblock excluding a road, landing, roadside work area or log sort area in the cutblock: 

    (i) operating a power saw; 

    (ii) mechanical tree felling, woody debris piling or tree processing, including de-limbing; 

    (iii) welding; 

    (iv) portable wood chipping, milling, processing or manufacturing; 

    (v) skidding logs or log forwarding unless it is improbable that the skidding or forwarding will result in the equipment contacting rock; 

    (vi) yarding logs using cable systems; 

In addition to having a fire watcher and abiding by the high risk activity work shutdowns, a person who carries out a high risk activity on or within 300 m of forest land or grass land, must keep fire fighting tools and an adequate fire suppression system at the activity site. A “fire suppression system" means a system for suppressing fire by delivering (a) water, (b) a suppressant, (c) a surfactant, or (d) any combination of the substances. The fire suppression system should be “adequate” to the activity and the associated fire risk at the work area (more information in the link below). “Fire fighting tools” can include a round-nosed shovel, a Pulaski tool or mattock, or hand-tank pump containing at least 18 litres of water. 

Please take a look at the below link to a PDF for more information. It’s an “interpretive bulletin”, so it is not all written in legalese and has some great information to keep yourself and our island safer from wildfires.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/public-safety-and-emergency-services/w...

This has also been posted at https://lasqueti.ca/fire-safety

Fire Warden Ben