Premier recognizes need to budget more money for wildfire management
Posted July 22, 2015 12:16 pm.
Last Updated July 22, 2015 12:32 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
KELOWNA (NEWS 1130) – The premier acknowledges BC may have to start putting aside more money to tackle wildfires around the province.
Christy Clark says it’s a sad reality that threatening wildfires have become the norm in our province.
BC has spent over $100-million more than it budgeted for fire fighting this year.
Clark says they reached their $60-million amount by taking a rolling average. “We look at a rolling five or six year average and then we take that average and we plug that into the budget, but we always know that if it goes over the set budget amount, we just spend what we need to.”
And with several budget busting years in the recent past, the annual budget could rise in the future.
While it’s troubling to see this happen year after year, Clark says it has improved response.
“It’s kind of like every summer, they get the band back together, everybody comes to the coordination centre, they all know what they’re doing, they all know how to inter-relate because sadly we’re doing every year now.”
Fire fighters agree saying the comfort level with command structure and coordination has helped save homes and lives.
