Wildfire expert concerned about safety of Gospel Rock and Eagleview Heights developments

There is no fire plan for Eagleview Heights and the fire plan for Gospel Rock is lacking, says Al Beaver

Risk-management consultant Al Beaver has serious doubts about the fire safety of the Gospel Rock and Eagleview Heights developments. The Town of Gibsons has asked him to assist with the preparation of an application for funding under the provincial FireSmart program.

Beaver is president of Wildland Fire Risk Management Ltd. He lives in Gibsons and works globally as a risk-management consultant. He has recently been approached by the Canadian insurance underwriting industry to apply his forest-fire risk-modelling framework. On August 21, he appeared as a wildfire expert on The Current on CBC Radio 1.

Earlier this week, director of planning Lesley-Ann Staats told The Coast Clarion there is no fire-protection plan for the Eagleview Heights development. The OCP did not require it and the former council did not ask for one, she said.

Beaver is concerned. “At the lower bench [of the project] there is no good access, no turnaround for emergency vehicles. They have to back down a 12-per-cent slope to get out. Imagine doing that in the dark, the rain, or the snow, in a line of several emergency vehicles combined with the domestic traffic. And what happens if the greenbelt on the other side of Stewart Road catches fire as well?”

The upper bench of Eagleview Heights also has problems, Beaver says: there is not enough room for emergency vehicles and cars of residents fleeing an incident to operate at the same time.

Also, the whole development should have a 10-meter FireSmart standard setback from the forest edge for risk of wildfire, he says, and buildings should not be too close together.

There is continuous forest between Eagleview Heights and Gospel Rock, and a fire in one area could easily spread to the other, he says. Gospel Rock was the only area in Gibsons for which the OCP required a fire plan, and the town approved the developer’s plan without a peer review.

“I don’t know how to approach the Gospel Rock Wildland Fire Interface Protection Plan without redoing it,” Beaver says. “First of all, it is important to realize that every 20-percent increase in slope doubles the spread and intensity of a fire. A simple surface fire could turn into a crown fire once it reaches a slope.”

The slopes of Gospel Rock will be protected nature areas.

The Gospel Rock fire plan contains several compromises. “This project has been planned with the protection of sensitive forested ecosystems as a priority. Considering the sensitivities of these natural areas, some concessions have been made [by the developer] related to tree removal,” it reads.

“Embers can travel up to 500 meters,” says Beaver. “It does not take long before you get hit with thousands of embers.”

The plan contains more concessions. It defines a 7.5-yard (sic) setback to the property line: “This is less than the recommended 10-meter fuel-free zone. However, removing trees beyond the property line in the protected natural area will cause impacts to the integrity of this ecosystem. A compromise between environmental protection and wildfire risk-mitigation is required in these situations,” it reads.

A 10-meter setback from the forest edge is a FireSmart standard, Beaver says. “Insurance companies will assess risk against this standard.”

The plan also says: “In some cases, [safety] standards can be difficult to achieve for developments, and  can result in more stringent restrictions than intended.”

“I’ve seen the results of these sorts of compromises so many times over the years,” Beaver says. “It is the accumulation of what people think are just small compromises that culminate in disasters. To think that with good measures, a large part of disasters can be prevented.”

For one, the cul-de-sacs in the Gospel Rock design should be done away with, he says, and wide ring roads along the edges are needed to protect the area from fires especially next to slopes, with the added benefit of providing an emergency exit.

But even then, all traffic will converge at a bottleneck at the top of Chaster Road.

“It’s a nightmare,” he says. “In case of a wildfire, inevitably you get car crashes; emergency vehicles can’t get by, burning trees and wooden power poles fall on the road, people can’t get out. We’ve all seen the burnt-out vehicles along the exit roads in Paradise in California and this is a common observation from around the world.”

He points to a photo of last year’s wildfire in Fort McMurray. “Eighty thousand people could be safely evacuated because all four highway lanes were designated for the evacuation traffic. The highway also had wide snow gullies on either side, and this cleared area kept burning trees from falling on the road and reduced the radiant heat exposure to the evacuating people.

The town’s covenant with the developer specifies “a road structure from Mahan onto the west property line of 6-meter-wide pavement with gravel shoulders, and a secondary emergency access connection in a location to the satisfaction of the town.”

The Gospel Rock Wildland Fire Interface Protection Plan implies that fire safety could be an issue for the first 250 dwellings: “Two means of access are preferred, with adequate passing and turnaround space. Currently the site is accessed by one narrow road (Chaster Road) that meets Shaw Road at the development site. Shaw Road currently dead-ends, however, there are plans to extend this road in the future which will create two means of vehicle access.”

The developer has agreed to build this second road after the first phase of 250 dwellings is completed.

Two means of access should be mandatory before any construction, Beaver says, and Shaw Road may not be the best choice. It would be parallel to Chaster and both roads could be compromised if the fire spreads from that direction. An escape route from a ring road to Gower Point Road would be better and would also solve the problem of the bottleneck at the top of Chaster.

Not providing such a route during phase one of the development puts more than 500 people on Gospel Rock and their pets at risk, Beaver warns. “Well planned emergency and domestic access and egress extends beyond wildfires, to all hazards. It is just good risk management business and due diligence.”

The guidelines in development permit 10 for Gospel Rock include some potential fire hazards: “arbors, archways, pergolas and trellises are encouraged to transition between indoor and outdoors places.” The guidelines also include “significant landscaping” adjacent to public roadways, the use of natural building materials and exposed timber, fences, dense shrubbery, hedges capable of impeding travel through to adjacent properties, and drought tolerant ground cover.

Beaver also points to the effects of smoke.“It does not always reveal its source very well and especially in neighbourhoods with limited access routes this can easily lead to panic. Residents trying to evacuate will be on the same path as emergency vehicles attempting to access the scene, creating chaos and heightened panic.”

Fires on Gospel Rock and Eagleview Heights would likely not be confined to these developments alone; older houses at the perimeter would go, too. Beaver points to a photo of a completely burnt-out Paradise. “These were significant house-to-house ignitions. The same was witnessed during the Fort McMurray fire. We need to do everything to prevent that. Protection of the public and emergency responders is a no-brainer.”

Have big wildfires affected insurance? “With the recent wildfires in California and Fort McMurray, the insurance companies are hurting and looking at methods of modelling wildfire property risk. I think that in the near future, people living in wildland urban interface areas will probably be required to purchase wildfire insurance separately, which will not be cheap, if the underwriters will insure at all. They already have similar policies for construction in designated flood areas.”

The town recently asked Beaver to help prepare an application for a grant for the FireSmart program. FireSmart is a not-for-profit program for communities close to forested areas. Homeowners, community associations, municipal and local governments and fire departments form a partnership to reduce the threat of wildfire. Part of the program is to design new developments in a way that reduces the risk of wildfires and facilitates access for emergency responders.

Last month, the provincial government announced it has $10 million available for municipalities willing to join the program. In the past few years, 46 communities in B.C. have signed up, among them North Vancouver and Maple Ridge which have adopted bylaws requiring new developments to conform to FireSmart standards.

It is not known if the design of the Eagleview Heights and Gospel Rock developments could still be altered to meet FireSmart standards.

Gibsons fire chief Rob Michael was not available for comment.