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Local Fire Control Center Is Ready
by Tammy Lipke
Imagine driving down a peaceful forest service road - miles from anywhere, all you can see are trees, birds, and ...smoke? Forest fire!

Remembering the ads you've seen and heard since childhood, you race to the nearest telephone and call it in. That's where Brian Atherton and his crew at the Northwest Fire Control Center come in.

Brian is the current Fire Control Officer for the Northwest Region of BC. The Fire Control Officer changes weekly among senior protection staff during the fire season to optimize performance.
Leslie tries successfully to contact a crew that is overdue checking in

The region encompasses approximately twenty-two percent of the province. The Fire Control Center, a building located on D.O.T. Road near the Smithers Airport, is the heart and soul of forest fire protection.

There's a lot of technology involved in keeping an eye on the forest fire situation nowadays. For instance, information from all over the province is constantly being fed into the system computers, such as lightning strikes for the past 12 hours. Weather updates, maps and other information are updated about every 30 minutes.
Local fire. Fire photos courtesy of Dave Marek, BC Forest Service.
Sensors mounted on poles all over BC track lightning, the cause of over 60% of all forest fires. When a strike occurs, the three nearest sensors triangulate the position (with a one kilometer accuracy), and relay it to computers everywhere in the network.

BC's Fire Suppression technology is the most advanced in Canada. It needs to be - we have the most varying terrain, the toughest access, and the largest variety of fuel types found. These conditions also make crew safety of paramount importance.

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