Forestry audits and emergency preparedness reviews usually reach the same conclusion: risk mitigation is much cheaper than disaster recovery. Photo by Vincent McDermott/Postmedia

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Every summer Canadians watch the same terrifying scenes unfold. Flames race through forests. Families are evacuated with only what they can carry. Firefighters battle blazes that seem almost impossible to control. Smoke from Canadian fires turns skies orange and disrupts life in the U.S., hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away. Governments declare emergencies, as British Columbia has this year, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing fast-moving flames.

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The frightening images naturally raise two questions: Why is this happening? And what can the responsible authorities do about it? But what’s to be done doesn’t necessarily depend on why it is happening.

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“Climate change” is the answer to “why?” offered by governments and much of the media. It may indeed be a factor but wildfires do not begin with a slow increase in average global temperature. They begin with ignition by lightning, arson, unextinguished campfires or other events. Whether a fire then becomes disastrous depends on many things: wind, lack of rain, fuel stocks, terrain and how quickly it’s attacked after it starts.

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Prevention includes using managed burns to reduce hazardous fuel accumulation. A managed fire burns predictably, based on its immediate enclosure and fuel supply. Wildfires, in contrast, can spread at high speed across thousands of acres, their wind-blown embers jumping rivers or roads, and change directions unexpectedly as wind and terrain shift. Communities in forested areas need to be planned and built with such risk factors in mind.

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Early detection of fires and rapid response to them can prevent large-scale emergencies. To provide effective detection and response, governments need sufficient numbers of trained firefighters, aircraft and equipment, good coordination among agencies, and the ability to act quickly before fires grow out of control.

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The destruction of Lytton, B.C., illustrates the challenge. The town was damaged by fires in 1931, 1938 and 1949 before the 2021 wildfire destroyed much of it. If a town built in a hot, dry, wind-swept canyon has had serious fire damage several times in a century, treating its latest fire as a brand-new, unpreventable “climate emergency” is the ultimate political cop-out. Repeated decisions to rebuild without aggressive fuel mitigation, fire breaks and modern, fire- resistant construction amounts to political negligence.

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If climate change really is increasing wildfire risk, that makes prevention and preparedness more important, not less. Canadians deserve more than dramatic images on television and misleading, simplified explanations. They deserve governments that do everything reasonably possible to prevent fires that do start from becoming disasters.