With the wrap up to this year’s summer tinder season at hand, Alberta is playing with fire when it comes to modernizing its decades long approach to combatting forest fires insiders say.Hanging in the balance are the fate of prized and revered special places like Jasper that succumbed to this year’s flames. And at least one seasoned firefighting vet says its only a matter of time until towns like Banff are next.“We have to Save our towns,” says Rick Solomon, president and CEO of Onoway-based Firefox Wildfire Inc. “We can't do this anymore. It's just unsustainable.”.Although the 2024 wildfire season saw only about a fifth as many fires as last year, it was also arguably one of the most devastating on record with the heart wrenching destruction of one of its most revered Rocky Mountain gems in Jasper.Alberta is covered by about 36 million hectares of forest — give or take — or about 60% of its land mass.Thus far in 2024 about 240,000 hectares of forest have gone up in smoke, which is on the high side of the long term average of 210,000 hectares — but only a tenth 2.2 million hectares torched in 2023. About 1.75 million of those were caused by lightning with the rest attributed to human causes..That said, the damage this summer was no less heart wrenching as one of the country’s most prized mountain towns succumbed to the flames.Jasper is just another in a long and growing list of communities that have been destroyed over the years: Slave Lake in 2011; Lethbridge and Coalhurst in 2012; Fort McMurray in 2016; High Level in 2019; Waterton narrowly escaped utter destruction in 2017. Many observers are predicting Banff will be next.Each year people are constantly warned that the fire season that runs from May until October will only get more and more severe over time. Observers can quibble over whether climate change or other manmade factors are at play, but the undeniable fact is that forest fires are becoming more intense and costing billions more in fire suppression and insured damages each year..It wasn’t always so.Before modern fire suppression began in earnest in the 1960, only a small percentage of the the forest cover was more than 75 years old. That’s because it had consistently been destroyed and regrown through successive cycles of re-generation.It’s also coincided with a massive growth in the population, which has grown five-fold since 1950. Toss in the impacts of mountain pine beetle infestation and it’s a long-term recipe for long-term disaster. .But experts say fire suppression methods, which are mostly unchanged since the 1960s haven’t kept up with the changes in both the demographics and the landscape of the region.That’s because modern fire suppression is based around the use of toxic fire retardants deployed by aircraft flying from centralized bases to support ground crews that are often rappelled from helicopters, Solomon explains..It’s a costly and expensive approach that hasn’t fundamentally changed in 50 years, starting with the retardants.Not only are most toxic to the environment, they don’t work very well here said in an interview..The British Columbia government bears him out. According to its website, fire retardants are primarily ammonium phosphate or sulphate-based compounds with small amounts of other chemicals used as dyes, for anti-corrosion, or for other purposes.They are generally applied as foams that are made of proprietary mixtures of sodium and ammonium salts, alcohol, ether, and sulphates.Although they’re generally considered safe for use, they have to be diluted and applied under specific conditions to avoid causing damage to fish and wildlife. That’s because they increase the salinity of water bodies along with ammonium, phosphate and nitrate concentrations.That’s why firefighters avoid dropping them in close proximity to water bodies except in extraordinary circumstances. But the province’s environment ministry justifies the risk compared to the risks of runoff, erosion and water contamination from the fire itself.“Effects on fish would likely be minimal when used per established protocols, but effects can include mortality, avoidance, startle or confusion behaviour, loss of equilibrium and gill damage,” it says..The solution says Solomon is to develop the next generation of environmentally friendly fire retardants that limit damage to the landscape and actually work.That’s why he’s frustrated with delays getting his own proprietary gel product approved for widespread use. It’s made from Alberta-grown canola and a water based gel produced by Dow Chemical near Fort Saskatchewan.Not only is it non-toxic, but Solomon insists it actually works. That’s why its been cleared for use by the US Forest Service and states like California where his company was actually working at the time of the Jasper fires.Instead of using dedicated airstrips, his planes could have landed and taken off from highways and loaded with gel at the side of the road. Instead of merely trying to stall the flames, he insists his method could have attacked the flames directly.“Retardants, you know, retardants don't put out fire. It slows it down. So you can put people in front of it. Well, how are you going to put people in front of a rank five fire, 300 feet, flames?”“Every air tanker goes out, it's only hauling 400 gallons of your target. But when I fill that same air tanker up, say, with 2,000 gallons of gel, it goes out and it comes 2,000 gallons of gel, right? And it's a fraction of the price.” In that regard, there was little or no way Jasper could have been saved..And for the record, Firefox couldn’t have fought the Jasper fire even if it wanted to partly because those efforts were managed by Parks Canada and not the Alberta government. But it still breaks his heart to see the town go up in flames when he knows so much more could have been done.“So why are we even dropping the stuff, you know? And that's what I'm told: ‘all we we use indirect attack’. I says, ‘well, why don't you use direct attack with the air tankers?’ And you know, for the money we spend putting gel in air tankers is going to be revolutionary, but they don't want it. They will fight me. They have been fighting me forever. It's been 10 years now,” he laments.“They don't want change. They want to stay at the same status quo. Use their toxic retardants and foams, you know, these toxic chemicals. But, it's time to change.”
