Photo Credit: County of Grande Prairie

By Shane Clausing

Wildfire Mitigation Strategy

County moves to Priority 3 of Wildfire Mitigation Strategy

Apr 29, 2021 | 5:00 AM

The County of Grande Prairie’s Wildfire Mitigation Strategy will be moving west of Highway 40 this spring.

Dan Lemieux, the Community Services Director with the County of Grande Prairie says this will ensure communities are kept safe from any potential wildfires that may spurt up.

“Our objective is to lower the risk of wildfire or in the case where we do have a wildfire, we want to decrease the loss of life and infrastructure,” said Lemieux.

“We have some heavily forested areas that create a wildfire hazard, so we are trying to deal with them in a priority order.”

The rural subdivisions involved in Priority 3 include The Ranch, Dunes West, Deer Ridge Estates and Mystic Ridge. This phase includes planning, engagement and public education.

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“We’re looking at Crown land areas where the risk is the greatest,” explained Lemieux. “Over the last few years, we’ve had some issues with Mountain Pine Beetles, which has killed a lot of our pine. That pine has been affected by the beetles and it creates a greater hazard.”

“Our objective is to take a look and do an assessment of those areas and then identify and map those areas that are high risk. A later part of the project will be to clean up some of those areas.”

The following areas have already been identified as high risk and worked on throughout :

Priority 1: The Dunes and Aspen Ridge Area

• Patches of dead trees were removed and the harvested timber was sold to off-set the project costs. The Aspen Ridge work was completed in 2017.

Priority 2: Southeast of Bear Creek

• Where possible, harvested timber was again sold to off-set the project costs. This work was completed in 2018.

This strategy put in place by the County has been in the works for over five years. It works alongside the County’s other FireSmart programs and efforts to prevent fires to keep the community a safe place.

Lemieux mentioned the County will also be hosting some information sessions on the project and how to protect their homes.

Residents in high-risk areas are reminded to always be prepared in case you need to evacuate because of a wildfire. Every household and business also is reminded to remove deadfall, standing dead trees, excess wood and leaves from their property.