Kelowna equipped with ‘game changer’ of a firefighting tool

Kelowna has a new tool to help protect homes during wildfires and officials say it’s “a game changer.”

“This is a whole new movement of structure protection in our community,” Kelowna Fire Department deputy chief Larry Watkinson said Wednesday of the $230,000 asset.

The trailer is equipped with everything crews need to protect up to 30 homes. There are hundreds of sprinkler heads on one side, a variety of different adapters, and thousands of feet of hose.

“We often put sprinklers where we know we can’t put firefighters where it is high danger, high risk,” Watkinson said.

“It’s a big humidity bubble that covers the property or the asset or the infrastructure that we have sprinklers set up on that creates the defensible space from the firefront”

Last year, when the McDougall Creek wildfire swept through the Central Okanagan, crews had to borrow the province’s structure protection trailer. While it was a benefit, it would have been better to have it on hand when the need arose, rather than taking the time to coordinate a provincial asset that may have been deployed elsewhere.

“It’s very rapidly deployable,” Watkinson said.

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“For example, our Knox Mountain fire last year, when it was racing up into Magic Estates, instead of just sending fire engines we would have sent this trailer and fire crews and we would have set up sprinklers on top of roofs to help defend the properties”

Homes and buildings of all kinds fall under the purview of the municipal fire departments but local departments do work closely with BC Wildfire Service, which has a mandate to fight wildfires. Its crews are not trained to fight structure fires.

“We’ve been seeing actually over the last number of years that wildfires are moving more into that urban interface, interacting with homes and neighbourhoods,” Aydan Coray, BC Wildfire information officer, said.

“We rely quite heavily on local fire departments and structured departments to help in response to wildfires”

The plan is for the Kelowna Fire Department to acquire two more of these trailers over the next two years, possibly sooner. The new tool will help protect homes but the fire department maintains the best protection is still fire smarting.