BANFF – The devastating fallout of the Jasper wildlife and unprecedented wildfire seasons of recent years across Canada have sparked changes to two of the Town of Banff’s FireSmart rebate incentive programs.
The first change is an extension of eligibility for the incentive program for replacing combustible fire-prone roofs to all residential buildings and requiring Class A materials – the highest rating, offering the highest resistance to fire.
The other is to modify the tree replacement program, which until now has encouraged flammable conifer trees be replaced with free deciduous trees, to simply a tree removal program, with no requirement to replace.
Town of Banff officials say neither rebate program is fully subscribed, but they are hoping for greater participation given elevated awareness to wildfire threats and increased resident buy-in to FireSmart programming and best practices.
“We as a community are in an undeniably state of worry and nervousness to accelerate change and to move the bar faster and further than we ever have,” said Katherine Severson, director of emergency and protective services for the Town of Banff.
“It’s not that FireSmart practices have changed, but we’re learning more and more year-over-year due to the severe weather events and fire events happening, and we are really understanding where we get some excellent bang for our buck when it comes to FireSmart practices in communities.”
The Banff Fire Department calculated 228 combustible roofs remain in Banff. While many are wood shake or shingle roofs, this count now includes all structures with combustible roofing materials such as old asphalt roofing that is not in good condition.
Successful roof replacement projects qualify for $1,200 per home.
The municipality is opening up the program to all residential homeowners, not just single family dwellings, but is also trying to align the program with a proposed land use bylaw amendment to designate the entire town as a high risk fire zone.
As it stands now, there are two risk zones within the townsite, with different requirements for building materials.
“Until that change happens, it is possible someone could replace their roof within the medium risk zone, without using class A materials,” Severson said.
“What we want to say is in order to qualify for this incentive you have to be replacing with a class A material and this will reflect that change ahead of the bylaw in order to be eligible for this incentive.”
With the change to the tree removal incentive program, Severson said the plan is to stay within the existing $10,000 annual budget, supporting about 50 homeowners with an incentive of up to $200 per homeowner for tree removal.
“We’re also simplifying the process, so as long as they have a tree removal permit from the Town of Banff, they will be eligible for this rebate,” she said.
“We used to do all the planning for the homeowner, including what kind of tree they wanted, delivery and so forth, so we think this will make a big increase to our subscription to this program.”
The incentive programs require a free FireSmart home assessment by the Banff Fire Department, with 152 assessments done in 2023 and 163 in 2024.
Severson said the rooftop sprinkler incentive program allowed homeowners to buy the sprinklers at 50 per cent of the cost to the Town of Banff – and saw 120 sprinklers sold in each of 2023 and 2024.
“Homeowners are receiving a significant discount from what it would be if they bought it in the open market,” she said.
“This program is 100 per cent subscribed and very successful.”
Businesses can request FireSmart assessments, but Banff Fire Chief Keri Martens said none have been requested to date, other than bed and breakfast operations.
“It is one of those things that is on our list of things to tackle… We haven’t had a lot of requests for that yet, and we’re hoping we can put some more emphasis and some more energy behind that in the coming year,” Martens said
“We are getting some pretty decent uptake from our residents, but we know that there are a lot of commercial buildings in town that need some work and we’re happy to go out and speak with those businesses.”
