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FireSmart and Local Authorities

Presented by: (Insert your name and job title)

Presented on: (Insert date)

FireSmart, Intelli-feu and other associated Marks are trademarks of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

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Presenter Introduction

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Keep in Mind

Up to 90% of homes destroyed by�wildland fires are ignited by embers.

*Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety USA, 2019

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Objectives

Learn why FireSmart is Crucial

Identify the Wildland Urban Interface and Wildfire Fuels

Explore Fire Behaviour and the Home Ignition Zone

Explore Relevant Resources & Programs for Local Government

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What is FireSmart?

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What is FireSmart?

The FireSmart BC Program is a provincial initiative aimed at reducing the risk of wildfire damage to homes, communities, and forests.

Everyone’s actions count. Whether you’re a homeowner, renter, or community leader, following FireSmart principles helps build a wildfire-resilient British Columbia.

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What is FireSmart?

FireSmart is the Canadian standard recognized by all provinces and territories.
It’s based on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards and has evolved over 40 years.
It’s backed by a vast amount of field, laboratory and modelling research.
FireSmart guidelines have proven their legitimacy as measures of hazard.
FireSmart methods have been demonstrated time and time again to reduce the risk of losses, under even the most extreme fire conditions.

FireSmart is about living with wildfire and managing for it on our landscapes

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Why FireSmart?

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Why FireSmart?

B.C. is experiencing a serious and sustained increase in extreme wildland fire behaviour in the

Wildland Urban Interface (WUI).

20-year average: Total wildfires in BC: 1,676

20-year average: Total hectares burned: 511,136ha.

-BC Wildfire Service (July, 2026)

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Why FireSmart?

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Why FireSmart?

Reduces ignition risk
Decreases strain on already stretched resources
Builds peace of mind
Strengthens community resilience

There can also be some unexpected benefits of following FireSmart principles.

For instance, it helps to reduce the probability that wind-driven embers falling far ahead of a wildland fire will ignite a fire on or around your home.

It improves neighbourhood relationships with local fire staff.

Allows firefighters to concentrate their efforts on fighting the wildland fires rather than devoting resources to protecting homes.

Offers peace of mind, knowing that your property and neighbourhood is more prepared to survive a wildland fire in the event that one should occur.

FireSmart offers real benefits: it lowers ignition risk, eases the pressure on our firefighters, builds peace of mind for families, and helps entire communities bounce back stronger.”

FireSmart is about long-term behavioural change.

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The Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) & Fuels

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What is the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI)?

“The area where human development meets or intermingles with the natural environment.”

Wildland fuels and built fuels all have different burning characteristics.

When combined, they create uniquely complex conditions that affect the ignition and spread of fire that are very different than the conditions created by an isolated structural or wildland fire. This is called the WUI fuel complex.

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Wildland and Built Fuels

Wildland Fuels

Wildland fuels are the natural vegetation and forest materials that can burn during a wildfire, such as wood (cellulose, lignin),leaf and needle litter, duff, peat, muskeg, organic soil layer, cons, pitch and sap.

Built Fuels

Built fuels are the human-made materials that can ignite and spread fire, such as hydrocarbons, metals, glues, electronics, and a variety of treated/ wood products.

Wildland Fuels: Wildland fuels are the natural vegetationand forest materials that can burn during awildfire, such as wood (cellulose, lignin),leafand needle litter, duff, peat, muskeg,organic soil layer, cons, pitch and sap.

Built Fuels: Built fuels are the human-made materials thatcan ignite and spread fire, suchas hydrocarbons, metals, glues, electronics,and a variety of treated/ wood products.

Additionally, we have ladder fuels which are the plants and materials that allow fire to climb from the ground into the trees.

That could be tall grass, shrubs, small trees, dead branches, or low-hanging limbs. When those fuels connect the ground to the tree canopy, they act like rungs on a ladder and give fire a path upward.

By reducing ladder fuels, we help keep fire closer to the ground, where it is usually less intense and easier to manage.

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Wildland and Built Fuels

We need to view the built environment with a similar lens to the natural environment

Both wildland and built fuels can ignite and burn. We need to apply the same principals to breaking up both the horizontal and vertical arrangement of fuels to the lived in/built environment. Surface fuels can collect embers (such as in this pine straw landscaping), ignite and propagate fire into surrounding fuels such as the wooden lattice and deck (which act as ladder fuels to the aerial crown fuels of a house – the roof).

Similar to crown fire in the natural environment spreading from tree-to-tree, once the roof of a house is ignited and unable to be extinguished, such as in an ‘urban conflagration’, it can spread roof-to-roof far more easily. We need to reduce surface fuels and remove ‘the ladder fuels’ of homes and the built environment to prevent structure to structure ignition in our communities in the same manner we apply these concepts to a forest.

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Community Fire Disaster Sequence

When we talk about protecting communities from wildfire, we often focus on firefighting resources or fuel management in the surrounding forest. These are important, but post-fire research shows a more complete picture of what actually determines whether homes survive.

This is known as the community fire disaster sequence.

Environmental conditions such as hot, dry weather, wind, and terrain are difficult to change and do not fully determine the outcome on their own. They influence fire behaviour, but they are not the main driver of whether homes are lost.

The biggest influence is community conditions, including how homes are built, spaced, and maintained, and what is around them at the property level.

This is where FireSmart comes in. We cannot change the weather or landscape, but we can change conditions around homes to reduce risk.

Wildfire does not move through communities the same way it moves through forests. In the Wildland Urban Interface, the main issue is structure ignition, not wildfire control.

When multiple homes ignite at once, suppression resources can be overwhelmed, leading to neighbourhood-scale losses. This is the disaster sequence in action.

FireSmart actions such as reducing nearby fuels, pruning vegetation, and creating non-combustible space around homes can reduce fire intensity near structures and, more importantly, reduce the chance of ignition.

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Community Fire Disaster Sequence

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Home Ignition Zone

Three priority areas:

Immediate Zone �(0 - 1.5 metres)

Intermediate Zone�(1.5 - 10 metres)

Extended Zone�(10 – 30 metres)

Many factors can influence wildfire behaviour, including weather, topography, and community design. However, research has shown that the condition of a structure and the area within 30 metres of it have the greatest impact on whether a home survives a wildfire.

We call this area the Home Ignition Zone, or HIZ. It includes your home, any other structures on your property, and everything within 30 metres of those structures.

To make FireSmart actions easier to prioritize, the HIZ is divided into three zones: the Immediate Zone, Intermediate Zone, and Extended Zone. We work from the structure outward because the area closest to the home has the greatest influence on wildfire risk.

Across all three zones, the focus is on reducing opportunities for flames to spread and removing places where embers can accumulate and ignite.

Let's take a closer look at each zone and some of the actions you can take to make your property more resilient to wildfire.

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Structure Ignition Triangle

One helpful way to make wildfire risk feel more manageable is to break fire spread down into three main pathways: embers, direct flame, and radiant heat.

When we look at a structure, vegetation, or any combustible material, we can ask three simple questions:

Can embers collect and ignite it?

Can flames reach it directly through nearby fuels?

And can heat from something burning nearby become hot enough, long enough, and close enough to ignite it?

FireSmart mitigation is about reducing those pathways. By removing ember traps, breaking up direct fuel connections, and increasing separation from nearby combustibles, we can reduce the chances of ignition. While nothing with fire is ever 100 percent guaranteed, addressing these three pathways gives us a practical and repeatable way to reduce wildfire risk around homes and community infrastructure

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Programs and Resources

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Community Wildfire Resiliency Plan (CWRP)

CWRPs are the next generation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs). CWPPs were introduced in 2004 as part of the Strategic Wildfire Prevention Initiative (SWPI) and served as the primary wildfire risk reduction planning mechanism for British Columbia communities.

A CWRP helps a community understand where wildfire risk exists, what values could be affected, and what actions should be prioritized to reduce that risk over time.

It is not just a vegetation management plan. It looks at wildfire resiliency more broadly, including things like FireSmart education, emergency planning, development considerations, inter-agency cooperation, training, and community-level mitigation work (the 7 FireSmart Disciplines).

A CWRP helps a community move from knowing wildfire is a risk to having a clear, prioritized plan for reducing that risk.

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Wildfire Mitigation Program

The FireSmart BC Wildifre Mitigation Program was designed to engage residents in voluntary wildfire mitigation activities by offering a free professional home assessment with property-specific recommendations.

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Wildfire Development Permit Area Guide

A Wildfire DPA is an effective tool for addressing wildfire risk to new construction at the time of development or during retrofitting or renovations. While implementing a Wildfire DPA will contribute to the mitigation of the adverse impacts of wildfire on development, other tools and incentives should be explored for the on-going management and maintenance of structures and vegetation on private properties such as FireSmart™ grants and rebates, property maintenance bylaws, and obtaining covenants as a condition of rezoning or subdivision approvals.

Building policies and recommendations are administered by federal, provincial, and local governments in Canada. At the local government level, development permit areas (DPAs) are designated areas where special guidelines apply to achieve a particular goal or set of objectives for new and existing developments.

In British Columbia, local governments can establish DPAs in their Official Community Plans (OCPs) and DPA guidelines in their OCPs or zoning bylaws to consider wildfire threats at the planning stage of construction. This opportunity to enable policy related to development in wildfire prone areas allows regions and communities to introduce tailored development guidelines for their community.

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Funding

The First Nations’ Emergency Services Society & Indigenous Services Canada On-Reserve Wildfire Resiliency Program is designed to support First Nations communities strengthen their wildfire resiliency at both the community and landscape levels

Three Funding Streams

Cultural and Prescribed Fire
Operational Fuel Treatment
FireSmart

Learn More At: https://www.fness.bc.ca/core-programs/mitigation/

The FireSmart Community Funding and Supports program provides funding to First Nations and local governments in BC to increase community resiliency by undertaking community-based FireSmart planning and activities that reduce the community’s risk from wildfire.

To April 2026, 280 eligible applicants have received funding, including 132 First Nations and 148 municipalities/regional districts.

Learn More At:

https://www.ubcm.ca/cri/firesmart-community-funding-supports

UBCM FireSmart Funding

The FireSmart Community Funding and Supports program provides funding to First Nations and local governments in BC to increase community resiliency by undertaking community-based FireSmart planning and activities that reduce the community’s risk from wildfire.

On-Reserve Wildfire Resiliency Program

The FNESS–ISC On-Reserve Wildfire Resiliency Program is designed to support First Nations communities in strengthening their wildfire resiliency at both the community and landscape levels. Delivered in partnership between the First Nations Emergency Services Society (FNESS) and Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), the program funds and facilitates the implementation of wildfire mitigation strategies that are flexible, culturally sensitive, and responsive to the unique strengths and customs of First Nations communities. This program operates on an annual intake basis.

This funding offers wildfire resiliency funding through 3 streams:

Cultural and Prescribed Fire
Operational Fuel Treatment
FireSmart

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Questions?

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