A large hedge fire in Kelowna, B.C., on Tuesday has fire officials encouraging residents to consider removing or replacing their cedar trees.
“You can see all throughout Kelowna, there are a lot of dried-out cedar hedges,” said Kelowna deputy fire chief Larry Watkinson. “In our climate that’s certainly not conducive to where we live here in Kelowna.”
The fire destroyed a neighbouring garage as well as a vehicle on an adjacent property.
There was also damage to two boats and nearby homes.
It was around 4 p.m. when a call came into the fire department of a bush fire on Barkley Road in the city’s Lower Mission area.
When crews arrived, they discovered a column of mature cedar trees fully engulfed in flames.
“The flames were 20-30 feet in the air,” Watkinson said.
The fire started in a backyard where ironically the homeowners were FireSmarting their home at the time.
“There was a frayed component on the electrical line that was being used for the piece of equipment the person was using to trim up their hedges, you know, looking at the fire smart principles that they are trying to use to reduce the fire risk to that neighbourhood,” Watkinson said.
“Just sadly it was unfortunate circumstances — electrical cable failed and caused the fire while he was in the middle of doing this work.”
The homeowners of a neighbouring property where a vehicle was destroyed told Global News the flames were incredibly fast-moving and intensely hot.
Watkinson said cedar trees are notoriously flammable.
“With cedars…when they grow so large and dense, they don’t drop their debris; that just stays inside of the cedar hedge,” Watkinson said. “It creates a highly flammable, nuclear-explosive type of environment when it gets an ignition source and they burn rapidly.”
The fire department is once again renewing its calls for homeowners to think about the highly-flammable trees and is encouraging residents to remove them and take advantage of the FireSmart Community Chipping Program that’s now underway.
It’s a month-long free curbside chipping and removal program for which residents can register.
“As you witnessed last year in the Okanagan, fires that we had in the valley, a lot of the structures or structure ignition was caused by those cedar hedges, you know, wicking from home to home as a connection source between the two residences,” Watkinson said.
“So we really encourage the residents of Kelowna and our neighbouring jurisdictions to remove those cedar hedges and replace them with a non-combustible FireSmart plant.”
There is more information on the FireSmart Community Chipping Program on the City of Kelowna’s website.
