It’s truly alarming what’s been going on with the wildfire situation in B.C. this summer.
Never have so many communities been affected in one fire season with evacuations, alerts and ultimately, for some, devastating property destruction.
Wildfires are nothing new to our province or other parts of Canada. They happen every year, but it’s gone to another level in 2023.
During numerous past summers, there would be many wildfires but few, if any, actually impacting residences.
Increased population and more people with vacation homes and accessing the back country are all factors, but the weather itself with climate change conditions has now reared its ugly head more than ever before.
Once this fire season ends, there needs to be some serious changes and significant planning going forward.
Many have mentioned the Martin Mars water bombers that can hit a fire with a large volume of water at once. This needs to be seriously considered again as a means of dousing fires more quickly.
The cost of operating this type of aircraft would be minimal compared to the heavy financial toll these fires are leaving behind now and wiping out entire communities that we’ve seen in the last few years.
It doesn’t matter how many helicopters are in the air. Dropping small buckets of water on massive fires just takes far too long to bring them under control.
It would also be nice if the world’s billionaires did something to help this planet instead of experimenting with aircraft to send civilians to Mars and who knows where else in the solar system by the time they finish messing around.
You’d think by now some of these wealthy individuals – and we all know who they are – would have realized what their contributions could mean to this huge emerging humanitarian crisis here on Earth.
It’s bad enough so many people are being displaced from their homes because of civil wars and other politically-based unrest. The last thing we need are more refugees from climate disasters while the people in power to do something about it essentially turn a blind eye.