Chilliwack Fire Protection
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. Similar complexes are under construction all over the city
Chilliwack, a community of more than 100,000 people relies on paid-on-call firefighters, built around a core of career firefighters. It can take time for paid-on-call firefighters to respond to calls, 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.
Additionally, the Chilliwack fire department doesn't offer swift water rescue. Firefighters respond to the Vedder river for drowning calls numerous times per year and usually can't enter the water. This means victims must wait for volunteers from Search and Rescue to gather their equipment downtown and respond.
Our fire department also does not offer heavy rescue. This training and equipment would enable us to deal with incidents involving equipment like forklifts, semis and excavators and heavy farm equipment.
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.
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.
Chilliwack needs a comprehensive wildfire landscape management plan and an emergency hillside evacuation plan. The current emergency plan is years out of date.
Fully funding the fire department, increasing scope and training, equipment and staffing, would mean 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.