Red Lake Fire 7, 1986 (photo courtesy of Brian Stocks)
People have always lived with the threat of fire – urban fires, wildfires and interface fires. Urban fires cause thousands of fatalities and billions of dollars of property damage each year. Wildfires destroy forests, but result in few fatalities. Fires between urban and wild areas, known as interface fires, are an emerging risk as more people live on the fringe of urban centres, away from established urban fire protection. More than 900 homes, on average, are destroyed each year in the United States interface fires.
Wildfires are uncontrolled flames in woodlands, brush or open fields. Lightning and people cause most of these fires. Wildfires increase in intensity when it is dry and winds are strong. There is higher probability of wildfires during a drought. Fires diminish and burn out naturally when confronted by rainfall, favourable winds, healthy vegetation and/or firebreaks (where there is little fuel to burn).
Wildires are often seen as a threat that needs to be confronted urgently, but they are part of the natural cycle of renewal.
Well-intentioned programs to suppress wildfires have significantly changed our forests. Appropriate fire management is a challenging responsibility with conflicting priorities.
Interface fires are a growing hazard. More people are now living on the fringe of urban centres, beyond the reach of urban fire protection systems. Their buildings are vulnerable to most of the fire threats found in urban centres, as well as to the threat of wildfires. Interface fire risks are increasingly being integrated into wild fire risk management programs. Public education is also critical in persuading property owners to assume greater responsibility for this risk.
Losses from these hazards have been significant in North America. During the 1970s and 1980s, there were thousands of wildfire events but only eight, all of them in the United States, that led to material losses for property covered by insurance, with an average loss between C$7 million and C$65 million. In the early 1990s, however, there were four enormous wildfire events in California with a combined insurance loss exceeding C$4 billion.
