Fund the Fire Department
On April 19, 2025, a 55+ complex at Corbould and Kipp in Chilliwack's downtown rapidly went up in flames. Fire hoses strained to reach the roof where the fire apparently raced through the attic.
While similar complexes are under construction all over the city, funding the fire department is not keeping up. Our growing community needs a modern fire department, with up-to-date equipment and facilities, that can protect these buildings and the people who live in them. But year after year the funding is not there.
Chilliwack, a community of more than 100,000 people relies on a volunteer-based fire department, built around a core of career firefighters. It can take time for volunteer firefighters to respond to calls. The call comes while volunteers are at work, shopping, picking up the kids or at home in the middle of the night. They must get to the fire hall and suit up and if the right combination of firefighters with needed skills isn't there, then the truck might not go out.
Chilliwack hillsides are particularly at risk from interface fires--fires that occur where buildings meet trees. The proximity of wooded hillsides, with little to no fire mitigation measures, to residential neighbourhoods is seen on Promontory, where more than 12,000 residents live in a community with only two roads in and out. Traffic backs up regularly during the weekday commute, proving how difficult it would be to get everyone off the hill in the event of an emergency.
While there have been multiple fires on Promontory, a March 2016 fire in an outbuilding kitty corner behind my townhouse ignited a row of cedars that went up like firecrackers. A wind storm had sent a tree down across Promontory Road, keeping the fire truck from reaching the scene, while the wind fanned flames to a nearby house and melted the siding off our row of townhouses.
Townhouse complexes on Promontory have literally thousands of cedar hedges and continue to plant more, leading from home to home and sometimes even touching homes. In other communities, these flammable cedars are being phased out. The District of Squamish created a Wildfire Development Permit Area and a Wildfire Landscaping Management Bylaw to regulate building materials and landscape plantings. Specifically, new cedar hedges are not permitted.
A report into the 2023 Okanagan wildfires found that cedars helped to spread the fire: “The report assessed 21 damaged homes and 17 that weren't damaged. It found the ones that were damaged mainly featured coniferous trees like cedars and junipers within 10 metres of the structure, were located on steep slopes, had combustible siding and decks and plenty of easily ignitable material quite close to the home, like firewood, lumber and vehicles.” Promontory is not the only wooded hillside where ongoing development is taking place. Little Mountain, Chilliwack Mountain, and the Eastern Hillsides are all residential areas surrounded by trees and years of fuel build up.
Nearby Ryder Lake is a agricultural community, surrounded by trees and mountains, and also at risk of fire.
If taxpayers fully funded the fire department, structure losses and potential loss of life would be reduced. Fire insurance premiums might even get more affordable, balancing out the cost of funding fire protection.