BANFF – Banff residents are feeling more fear and anxiety over the potential threat of wildfire and evacuation than ever before.
The new 2023 community social assessment indicated residents had anxiety over climate change, the threat of a wildfire and fear of not being able to evacuate, especially those in the Middle Springs area on the south side of the Bow River.
Town of Banff officials say this is different from the 2018 community social assessment, which is a snapshot in time of the community’s well-being. While evacuation guides were hand delivered to every residential dwelling unit a few years ago, there is still uncertainty.
“There is a desire for a clear plan, easily accessible to all, for town-wide emergency evacuation procedures,” states the social assessment.
The 2023 wildfire season, the worst on record for Canada, and preceding years where thick smoke blanketed the Bow Valley from wildfires elsewhere, have put residents on alert for the last several years.
An out-of-control prescribed fire at Compound Meadows in May 2023 put added anxiety on locals, particularly because there was a lack of information from Parks Canada to the public at the time and the temperature danger was rated high.
Fast-moving flames jumped to the east side of Banff Avenue, and as a precaution, forced evacuation of Banff Rocky Mountain Resort and Mount View Barbecue as well as the Banff Light Horse Association corrals where there were several horses.
When wind direction changed and increased from from 10 km/hr to 28 km/hr, during a period of high fire danger, the fire jumped to the east side of Banff Avenue, where the fire grew about three hectares beyond the planned 82-hectare burn unit area. In all, 21 hectares burned.
Wildfire scientist Marie-Pierre Rogeau, who has 32 years of experience in fire research and is a fire ecologist living in Banff, raised concerns about the townsite’s vulnerability to fire following the May 3, 2023, escaped prescribed fire just outside the town boundary.
She said there have been enough wildfire evacuation near-miss examples and homes lost to wildfires since 2003 to understand that it is simply a matter of time until Banff will be threatened by wildfire that requires a full evacuation.
In reference to the pedestrian zone debate, she said wildfire science indicates it would be an error to block the main artery that can move traffic in the most expedited manner.
“To this end, the pinch point on the east end of town should be eliminated,” said Rogeau, who has a master’s degree on the fire history of Banff National Park and PhD focused on fire regimes and the effect of topography on fire frequency in the Rockies.
She said this fire already had all hands on deck with approximately 35 people from the fire training program, helicopter resources were readily available – five of them – and most importantly, a fortuitous rain shower fell over the burn area.
“In times of extreme fire conditions, it is Mother Nature that will put a fire out or dampen it,” she said.
“Mitigation measures and fire fighting resources are there to buy time during an evacuation and increase chances of success to save infrastructure and homes.”
Rogeau said a wildfire starting close to town means one-hour evacuation scenarios must be considered and all permutations of fire spread directions under 95-99th percentile weather conditions must be considered, as well as more dire scenarios where only one exit out of town is available, as was the case during the escaped Compound Meadow prescribed fire.
“Evacuation scenarios must be shared with all Banff residents. We are all at risk, not only Middle Springs residents,” she said.
Silvio Adamo, the Town of Banff’s retired fire chief who has 35 years in the field of emergency response, including 18 years in emergency management, said he is confident Banff is better prepared for evacuation than most communities.
“We’ve put a considerable amount of effort into it. There’s detailed plans and we’ve exercised them,” said Adamo, who is often deployed with Canada Task Force 2, including to two wildfires last summer where a total of 30,000 people were evacuated.
“There’s been a lot of work done on preparing and there’s more to do, don’t get me wrong … but we’re in a really good position compared to most.”
Adamo, who has lived in Middle Springs since 1997, said he understands well the risks associated with living in the mountains.
“It’s a risk we try to mitigate and we try to prepare for, but it’s a risk that you have to accept if you live in a certain area,” he said.
“If I lived in the city of Calgary, for example, I’d have to live with the risk of almost daily stabbings and shootings.”
With the current dry winter Alberta is experiencing, significant concerns are being raised, including from the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association, regarding the potential for a wildfire season mirroring last year’s devastating events.
Alberta faced an unprecedented wildfire season in 2023, with more than 2.5 million hectares of land burned. These wildfires are occurring with greater frequency, intensity, and duration across more expansive areas than in the past.
Canada-wide in 2023, more than 6,100 fires burned a record-breaking 17.5 million hectares, fuelled by record high temperatures and widespread drought conditions across much of the country. That was more than double the 1989 record. Typically, an average of 2.5 million hectares of land is burned in Canada every year. Unlike previous years, the 2023 fires were widespread from the West Coast to the Atlantic provinces and the North.
Locally for 2023, there were approximately 25 wildfires in Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks, burning a total of 346.5 hectares – of which 307 hectares were part of the lightning-sparked Mitchell Ridge wildfire in Kootenay.
Feeding into residents’ fears is the gridlock and vehicle congestion on the south side of the Bow River bridge and along Mountain Avenue to popular tourist attractions like the gondola and hot springs on Sulphur Mountain on busy summer days.
That has led many to voice opposition to the Banff Avenue car-free pedestrian zone, fearing it will block an evacuation route and impede evacuation from neighbourhoods on the south side of the Bow River at the bridge.
Mary Buckingham, president of Banff Senior Citizens Society, said some senior residents on the south side of the river are anxious during the dry summer months.
She said they wonder if they will be evacuated in a timely manner in the event of some sort of emergency.
“This anxiety was heightened this past summer with the fires in the Okanagan and Shuswap areas of B.C.,” she said in a recent letter to town council.
Buckingham said she knows of one senior, who picks up her grandkids from daycare on weekdays, and must allow at least 45 minutes to get across the river to get to the daycare on time in the summer months.
“That’s unacceptable in a town with a footprint of only four-square kilometres,” she said.
Long-time resident Kerry Julius, who also voiced opposition to the pedestrian zone, was concerned about evacuation plans.
“As we saw this past May, fire can come from any side of the town and it moves extremely fast with our wind fluctuations,” she said in a recent letter to council.
“There is no telling when we will have a wildfire, but if you look globally at what is happening we will have a fire and it will be devastating.”
Adamo recently addressed the opposition to the seasonal Banff Avenue pedestrian zone as it relates to public safety.
“There’s been a lot of comments about evacuation on the south side and I saw the signs, unfortunately, that said ‘we’re all going to burn in our vehicles. Oh my god!’” he said, noting that won’t happen.
Adamo said references to other communities burning to the ground, such as Lahaina on Maui, cannot be compared to Banff’s situation.
“There’s going to be some incredible lessons learned from that tragedy … but the circumstances are so completely different and we learn from every incident,” he said.
“Fort McMurray … it’s why we evacuate so quickly now. You saw the pictures of flames as people were driving. That was because they didn’t evacuate soon enough.”
Banff’s biggest pinch point for evacuation of the south side is the Bow River bridge, but Adamo said two lanes could be used to move traffic northbound with one reserved for emergency services personnel.
A multi-agency emergency exercise was conducted in 2019 using a scenario of a wildfire approaching from the west, with each dwelling on the south side of the Bow River visited in under four hours.
Adamo said traffic movement calculations were conducted using one vehicle per dwelling unit and all 1,300 visitor parking spaces occupied at Cave and Basin, Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff Upper Hot Springs, Sulphur Mountain gondola and Rimrock Resort Hotel.
“The data suggested we could move all vehicles over the bridge with one lane northbound in approximately five hours,” he said. “With properly managed two-lane northbound traffic, that time could be reduced.”
Adamo said evacuation strategies and tactics would include multiple exit tactics, including using all exits out of town, and would be based on various scenarios, including direction and intensity of a wildfire.
He said vehicles would be directed down one lane of Banff Avenue, even with the pedestrian zone in place, one lane down Bear and Lynx streets, and one lane up and over Otter Street exiting at the Rocky Mountain Resort intersection with Banff Avenue.
Sending more than one lane down Banff Avenue, he said, would create a bottleneck at the north end where it reduces to one lane.
“I urge everyone in this community to take a deep breath, do your research and know it’s not all doom and gloom and Banff Avenue is not the be-all and end-all of evacuation,” said Adamo.
“We are lucky that we have multiple exit strategies potentially here in the town … There’s no need to bulldoze patios down Banff Avenue in the event of an evacuation.”
RISK ASSESSMENT
The Town of Banff plans to update its risk assessment and emergency evacuation planning this year following a precedent-setting wildfire season in Canada.
With a rapidly changing and increasing risk environment corresponding to severe weather from climate change, officials say past predictive modelling on frequency and severity of incidents is outdated.
Coun. Chip Olver has been raising issues about evacuation planning, particularly after hearing from the community about evacuation of neighbourhoods on the south side of the river.
She wanted assurances the updated evacuation modelling coming from the municipality’s emergency management team, which will be done prior to summer, included evacuation impacts both with and without a pedestrian zone.
“I want the public to know we are dealing explicitly with this topic,” said Olver.
Coun. Hugh Pettigrew said he is hearing from residents concerned about evacuation, including in the event of a mass exodus.
“What we’re hearing from the community, not just the south side, is what if everybody left and we have two exits out of town – one’s Banff Avenue and one’s Norquay Road,” he said.
“Considering the volume of people who may all want to leave at once, has that been modelled in terms of a traffic expertise to see what would happen, how bad the roads would be plugged by the amount of traffic leaving all at the same time.”
Based on what has been learned from other communities that have been forced to evacuate for a wildfire emergency, Adamo said not every single person is going to get in the car at the exact same.
“If you’ve got a little bit of warning, even if you get to evacuation alert stage, we know that there’s folks – and this is from what we’ve seen in other communities that have called evacuations – will start to leave,” he said.
“The mass exodus like we saw in Fort McMurray was because they felt they weren’t in danger until it was almost too late.”
The May 1, 2016, wildfire began about 15 kilometres southwest of Fort McMurray, eventually sweeping through the town two days later, forcing the largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta’s history.
More than 88,000 people were safely evacuated, but the wildfire destroyed approximately 2,400 homes and buildings.
Only one fatality was recorded, which was related to a motor vehicle accident outside the community.
“Fortunately, Fort McMurray evacuated 80,000 people under pretty extreme conditions,” said Adamo.
Parks Canada and the Town of Banff are currently doing FireSmart work in the Middle Springs neighbourhoods. In addition, the Town offers homeowners a free FireSmart assessment from the fire department.
Adamo said Banff residents need to play their part in wildfire mitigations and preparedness, such as FireSmart actions around their homes and have an evacuation emergency kit ready to go.
“We all need to do our part to mitigate the risk as much as we possibly can, understanding that it’s never completely going away,” he said. “So you have to make a decision if you can live with that risk or not.”
But he said the single biggest thing residents can do is sign up for the emergency Voyent Alert system that is used in both Banff and Canmore, noting it is the best way to get accurate and timely information.
Banff, which has a population of about 8,305 according to the 2021 federal census, currently has 5,304 subscribers to the Voyent Alert, the emergency alert system used by the Town of Banff.
“If there isn’t a single resident in this community who isn’t subscribed to Voyent Alert, that’s unfortunate,” said Adamo.
“That was one of the big issues in Lahaina. There was no mass notification, people didn’t know, the communication was terrible and that’s usually one of the first things that breaks down.”
