As B.C. fires threaten highways, communities fear when their access routes will be choked off

A wildfire that has shuttered the only highway to several towns and First Nations on Vancouver Island for nearly two weeks has local leaders and disaster experts calling on B.C. to better safeguard essential infrastructure.

The mayor of Ucluelet, B.C. — one of several communities currently cut off from its only paved access road on western Vancouver Island because of a wildfire — said it's just the latest wake-up call to the risks of isolation in emergencies.

Highway 4 has been closed east of Port Alberni, B.C., since June 6 and is not expected to open until Saturday. 

"This section of highway has really brought to light how vulnerable we are as remote communities with one road in and one road out," Ucluelet Mayor Marilyn McEwen told CBC News in an interview.

"We do need an alternate way to get to the west coast."

But these Vancouver Island communities are not the only ones confronting the danger of losing access to land routes because of a wildfire. And as experts predict such fires will likely get bigger and burn longer because of climate change, even existing alternative routes could be at risk in the future.

Farther north in the province, the massive Donnie Creek fire is now burning only two kilometres from the Alaska Highway from Fort St. John to Fort Nelson and other parts of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality.

"Right now, it's really just the Alaska Highway in and the Alaska Highway out," said Northern Rockies Mayor Rob Fraser in an interview last week on CBC's Daybreak North. "So if the Alaska Highway goes out, it has a big impact on our community."

In the case of the Highway 4 closure, the province quickly announced a detour over gravel forest service roads, parts of them privately owned. But Ucluelet's mayor wants B.C. to look again at a long-proposed alternative route, the Horne Lake Connector, which is far shorter than the temporary detour.

Provincial Transportation Minister Rob Fleming said last Tuesday that his ministry "will undoubtedly look at that again as we come out of this situation."

In Fort Nelson, there is a paved alternative route to the four-hour drive south to Fort St. John — but it's a 17-hour journey through the Northwest Territories and Alberta.

"You'll see these cut-off events as fires get bigger and bigger," said David Bristow, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Victoria. "So the chance of multiple routes simultaneously failing does go up."

Bristow is part of a new research project, Serving Rural & Remote Communities: Co-developing Place-Based Climate Resilient Solutions.

WATCH | Businesses struggle as critical highway remains closed: