‘Doesn’t work great’: Bridging the emergency management gap for First Nations

The First Nations' Emergency Services Society is helping bridge the jurisdictional gap First Nations face during wildfire season through preparedness and mitigation.

Brenden Mercer has been fighting fires since 2009. He’s seen the wildfire landscape change in B.C. and how communities are left to deal with emergency management, firefighting and evacuations at an increasing rate.

“When I first started, you’d have big fire blowups occasionally, but over the years it seemed like these events were happening more frequently,” said Mercer.

“I think it was 2012 or 2013 and one fire near Cheslatta in the Binta Lake region ran about 15 kilometres overnight and at the time it was like, ‘Oh this is completely unheard of, this is unprecedented,’ but we’re seeing those types of events all the time.”

Now the decision support manager with the First Nations’ Emergency Support Services (FNESS), Mercer is helping bridge the jurisdictional gaps First Nations face during wildfire season.

While First Nations communities fall under federal jurisdiction, emergency management, forest management and fire management are all provincial. So when evacuation orders and alerts occur, so does added confusion.

FNESS delivers essential emergency management, fire training, education and prevention, help with emergency planning, response and recovery and source avenues for funding to First Nations communities across B.C.

While the province is currently experiencing its worst wildfire season for area burned, FNESS is working towards boosting prevention and mitigation across communities.

“The current strategy of response, in my opinion, doesn’t really work that great,” said Mercer. “Of course, you have to save people’s lives and save homes and properties but I’ve been on some of these wildfires where they’ll have water planes and retardant planes drop retardant all day and it’s basically dropping millions of dollars on the fire when there are other ways.”