Participants described building and maintaining structures as a distinct process from other wildfire mitigation activities. In this process, wildfire mitigation was only a secondary concern. However, many participants still built or renovated with fire resistant materials because they offered advantages beside fire resistance.

Informational materials for fire resistant construction should be specifically targeted at audiences looking to renovate, repair or replace building materials. Other benefits of these materials should be highlighted to provide a compelling case for adoption that focuses on long-term economic considerations. Partnerships with trusted non-fire related messangers and/or organizations should be specifically sought as agencies traditionally involved in wildfire mitigation are not likely to be considered competent information sources in this area.

Provincial regulators should consider incentivising fire resistant building materials. This might include adding fire-resistant exterior building materials to the list of PST exempt goods in high fire-risk areas in order to close cost gaps with cheaper, more fire-prone materials.

Participants were well aware of the fact that neighboring properties had a significant impact on the wildfire risks their homes faced. Because of this, they expressed some support for regulatory approaches to wildfire mitigation. However, the strength of this support was unclear.

Large overhauls of fire safety legislation in BC have proven difficult to achieve. To support incremental change to wildfire mitigation, designating specific mitigation concerns as fire safety hazards under the Fire Services Act (or eventual Fire Safety Act) or other laws or bylaws could allow specific problems to be addressed without over-reaching public support. This would permit homeowners time to adjust to regulations that would have a cumulative impact over time while managing priority problems first.

Incremental regulatory changes could be applied to all of the processes identified in this study (building and maintaining homes, introducing or encouraging fire-resistant plants and fuel removal activities).

Image courtesy of creative commons license: Inventorchris. (2011, March 31). Vans in fire service [Photo]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/41694433@N08/5578430650

Most participants made periodic small investments in wildfire mitigation that resulted in cumulative improvements to wildfire safety over several years. They also conducted mitigation activities with reference to their neighbours. Therefore, education and incentive programs should support long-term community adaptations by encouraging specific small investments by many people at key times. This would encourage communities to develop and adjust to new norms and mores. Further, resource constraints could be minimized by focusing on discrete activities that require less investment. By providing a detailed rationale, several options and specific supports for these activities, local governments could address homeowners lack of time, money and capability in coordinated ways. This research showed that fuel removal followed relatively predictable stages, suggesting an order in which to proceed.

Children, spouses, elderly relatives and other people were influential in decision-making about removing fuel from around homes. Education materials should be designed for them. Current FireSmart educational materials are primarily targeted at adult homeowners. FireSmart education materials for children and youth have been available for several years (FireSmart BC, 2021d), but there is very limited information available as to who is using them, how effective they are or how appropriate they are for conveying important wildfire mitigation information to children and youth. Nevertheless, they should be considered for dissemination to any community hoping to expand wildfire mitigation strategies to meet as broad an audience as possible. As elderly family members were influential in decision making regarding removing fuel, education materials for this group should also be developed and deployed. In some areas, language barriers may need to be addressed to meet the needs of specific language groups.

Participants began their mitigation activities with common-sense actions based on their understanding of fire transmission during wildfires. Unfortunately, fire transmission was poorly grasped by many participants, leading some to leave significant vulnerabilities around their homes. In order to prevent this, education materials should include additional emphasis on describing wildfire transmission to provide people with sufficient information to fully understand recommended mitigation activities. While current FireSmart materials include information on fire transmission, it is often limited to a small section in informational materials with other purposes. FireSmart should consider producing dedicated materials that provide homeowners with a better understanding of how wildfires move, particularly around homes.

Participants understood that both public and private investments in wildfire mitigation were necessary to achieve meaningful risk reduction for communities. They were also highly aware of areas of specific concern where wildfires could pose significant problems. When planning public mitigation activities, priorities should be placed on projects that are not only visible to communities but meet their specific concerns. This is likely to involve additional efforts to consult the public on risk-reduction. However, the data in this study indicated that participants who believed their community was progressing toward collective risk reduction were more motivated to move on to higher stages of removing fuel.

An additional consideration for this recommendation was that many participants in this study revealed that they did not like how certain aspects of wildfire mitigation projects impacted their communities. Addressing community concerns should also include considering what values the community wants to maintain during mitigation projects and accommodating the retention of those values.

It was clear that participants had been learning about fire by viewing media images of wildfires in other areas. Several participants had made specific observations of how they had observed wildfires move and under what conditions. They were learning about fire through visual observation, and this impacted their mitigation actions.

Education materials should focus on providing not just images of fire, but images that enhance viewers’ understanding of how fire moves. This could include images of ember production, transport and ignition as well as the role of such significant transmission intermediaries such as grass or dry leaves.

Education materials often use depiction of large fires, presumably to gain attention or raise concern. However, in doing so, they may be encouraging a view of wildfire as an unstoppable singular entity and passing up an opportunity to enhance public understanding of wildfire. The better the participants in this study understood how wildfire actually moved, the more they accepted FireSmart principles as effective. Additionally, the public needs to see fire less as a threat and more as a natural process that we need to learn to live with. Depictions of large fires do not support this view.

Agencies hoping to improve wildfire risk reduction in a community should seek first to evaluate what hazards a community faces and determine what concerns community members might have about those hazards. A hazard and vulnerability assessment should be conducted, and local assets and liabilities examined. There are several readily available methodologies for doing this, including the Justice Institute of BC’s (2021) Community Disaster Resilience Planning program. Once a broad understanding of local hazards is obtained, the importance of wildfire mitigation can be understood within that context.

A cursory understanding of the current state of wildfire mitigation should then be obtained. A methodology similar to that used in the fieldwork portion of this study could be used to examine properties and neighborhoods and obtain an understanding of not only specific vulnerabilities, but also what mitigative steps the community has taken and identify potential mitigation leaders. For agencies wishing to improve FireSmart adoption, recommendations to address these concerns should be developed to keep people engaged with wildfire mitigation processes and not impede their progress because of conflicts with a community’s shared values.

While FireSmart offers some information on the use of sprinklers to protect homes, this information is very limited (FireSmart BC, 2021a). Specific guidance should be available for homeowners to identify systems components and setup of a sprinkler system that can function effectively and safely in their communities. This is in-line with Abbot and Chapman’s (2018) recommendation to promote sprinkler technology in BC communities.

Abbott and Chapman (2018) also made recommendations regarding the development of response capacity and strategies for First Nations, rural and remote communities. A few participants from smaller communities in this study described how they were already involved in local response as there was no one else in their community to respond to incidents such as downed power lines or small wildfires. In examining a community context to support wildfire mitigation, it seems advisable to collect information on other assets the community has in case the need to leverage those assets is brought about by real or potential emergency.

Image courtesy of creative commons license: Province of British Columbia. (2015, August 21). Volunteers and service personnel come together to keep communities safe [Photo]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/45802067@N03/20149097554