Mar. 1 is the beginning of wildfire season in the province.
During the last wildfire season, over 900 wildfires burned over 800,000 hectares in Alberta.
Area Information Coordinator for Alberta Wildfire, Lynn Daina, provided a breakdown for the Fort McMurray Forest Area.
“During the 2019 wildfire season in the Fort McMurray Forest Area, we experienced 80 wildfires that burned a total of 50,588 hectares.”
According to research, wildfires are starting earlier and lasting longer than expected.
“Human-caused wildfires are generally accidental in nature,” according to a press release from the Alberta Government. “Almost all spring wildfires are caused by human activity and are completely preventable.”
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Devin Dresshen said, “Most wildfires are preventable and more than 70 per cent of Alberta’s wildfires last season were caused by humans.”
The wildfires that are human caused are either recreational or residential that start by from camp fires, using off highway vehicles or burning improperly.
Over the last five years there have been 73 recreational fires and 26 residential fires in the Fort McMurray forested area.
“The big one from us on the prevention side, if we could reduce those fires we would reduce the total number of human caused fires which makes it safer for everyone to access and enjoy our forest areas,” said Alan Gammon, Wildfire Technologist.
Since 2011 the two biggest fires in the area have been human caused.
The Richardson back country fire was over 700,000 hectares in size and the Horse River Wildfire was close to 590,000 hectares.
“That’s something important, especially for recreationalists to understand, what they are doing in the forest can have a very significant impact on their local community and businesses,” said Bernie Schmitte, Forest Area Manager.
During wildfire season, which ends at the end of Oct., all burning activities in Alberta’s Forest Protection Area, excluding campfires, will require a fire permit.
The fine for getting caught doing any burning without a permit is $287 with the possibility of having to pay administration penalties.
Daina, Gammon and Schmitte work out of the Alberta Wildfire headquarters in Fort McMurray in the provincial building.
Depending on the state of the forest and the wildfire danger, there could be a duty officer and a deputy duty officer along with two or three dispatchers directing Alberta wildfire resources throughout the Fort McMurray forest area.
Alberta Wildfire has initial attack, helitack, sustained action unit and firetack crews, air tankers and heavy equipment accessible if and when needed.
The Fort McMurray office has a very visual command centre with a wall of computer screens that consists of a dispatch map where they can follow and track all of their resources that are out in the field along with a live map that tracks the wildfires, and is basically what you see on the Alberta Wildfire App.
At the back of the office they have a backup marker board map where they can manually track resources if the computer ever went down.
If you see a fire burning in the forest you’re asked to report it to 310-FIRE.
With files from 660 News.
