Air-quality warning issued across Vancouver Island
Smoke on the water
The thick smoke blanketing Vancouver Island and much of the province grounded firefighting helicopters trying to dampen the 90-hectare wildfire burning on a steep slope in Zeballos on Monday.
That smoke, created by wildfires burning in the province, also contributed to poor air quality across Vancouver Island and created limited visibility that forced Harbour Air to cancel most of its afternoon flights.
In Zeballos, the twin-engine heavy-lift helicopter that spent the weekend spraying a heavy mist over the Gold Valley Main fire was unable to fly Monday morning because of the heavy smoke, said Lynne Wheeler, public information officer for the Coastal Fire Service.
The steep terrain makes it unsafe for firefighting on the ground so on Monday, firefighters focused on dampening the structures and homes closest to the fire line, Wheeler said.
The fire is moving up the hill, away from the village, “which is great news,” Wheeler said.
It’s unclear when the Sikorsky Skycrane will be able to resume firefighting operations.
“It's going to have to burn itself out when it rains so it could be going for a while,” Wheeler said.
An evacuation order, which affects six homes on the east side of the village, remains in effect.
The wildfire in Zeballos is one of 560 wildfires burning across B.C., all of which have contributed to poor air quality.
As of Monday afternoon, the air quality was rated at a high to very high health risk at all Vancouver Island monitoring stations.
The air in Nanaimo/Parksville, Victoria/Saanich, West Shore and Duncan poses a “very high” health risk, with the most serious rating of 10+ according to the B.C. government’s air quality index. The rating means there are high concentrations of fine particulate matter in the air, according to Environment Canada, which extended its smoky skies bulletin for Vancouver Island and most of the province.
Dr. Paul Hasselback, the medical health officer for central Vancouver Island, said much of the province is under a single highpressure system that has trapped the smoke in place.
“Here on the island, we've had smoke before but typically those events have been a couple [of] days and blown out, quite literally,” he said. In this case, the smoky skies have lingered for about a week.
Vancouver Islanders are used to breathing some of the bestquality air globally, Hasselback said, which is why the heavy haze may cause alarm. But he reminded people to spare a thought for residents in the Okanagan, Williams Lake and Prince George, where the smoke is so thick, the days look like night.
Air quality this poor likely means most Vancouver Islanders will experience some health impacts, Hasselback said.
That could range from itchy eyes and a scratchy throat to more severe symptoms for anyone with respiratory or cardiac health conditions, the elderly and children.
“All of us will feel symptoms at some point,” Hasselback said. “The early symptoms are irritation in the eyes, runny nose, headache.”
Anyone at higher risk is advised to stay indoors or avoid strenuous outdoor activities.
Several day cares across Nanaimo reported that they kept their kids indoors due to the poor air quality
Debra Tuck, president of the Nanaimo chapter of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, said her son, Evan, who has the genetic disease, was unable to complete his daily run up Mount Benson on Sunday because of the thick smoke.
Evan Tuck, 29, was halfway up Mount Benson, nine kilometres west of Nanaimo, when he was overcome with a coughing fit, Debra Tuck said. He coughed so hard, he vomited.
Debra Tuck said she can typically see Mount Benson from her home but now the visibility is so poor, the mountain has disappeared from view.
Smoky conditions have put B.C. on the map for some of the worst air quality in the world. The World Air Quality Index lists the air quality in most of B.C. as “unhealthy” and the air in Crofton and Nanaimo is listed as “very unhealthy.” According to the world index, Crofton’s air quality is worse than that of Dazhou, China.
Smoke isn’t the only way wildfires affect people and places far from the flames.
Researchers are studying how blackened forests affect ecosystems and water quality far downstream just as hundreds of blazes in British Columbia are darkening skies as far east as Manitoba.
“Fires are particularly hard on water,” said Monica Emelko, a water treatment engineer at the University of Waterloo and a member of the Southern Rockies Watershed Project.
“If the intensity is there and enough of the watershed is burned, you can have a very significant impact on the water supply and that impact can be long-lasting.”
The project began more than 10 years ago after southern Alberta’s 2003 Lost Creek fire. Its work has proven so valuable that the team recently received about $9 million in grants to keep studying how changes in forested areas affect water.
Fires and forests have always gone together. But that relationship began to change around the turn of the century.
“Fire managers started to see wildfire behaviour that was at the extreme end or beyond anything that had been previously observed,” said Uldis Silins, a University of Alberta hydrologist and project member.
The intensity and speed of fires ramped up. Blazes that used to calm overnight kept raging. At Lost Creek, firefighters reported walls of flame 150 metres high rolling through trees at 2 a.m.
A 2016 published paper found the effects of that fire were visible in rivers and streams more than a decade later.
Runoff began earlier and was faster, increasing erosion and creating drier forests. Nutrients such as phosphorus were up to 19 times greater — good for aquatic bugs but also for algae.
“Some of these streams became choked with algae,” Silins said. “We’ve seen lasting and pretty profound impacts on water quality and aquatic ecology.”
The project has seen similar effects from other fires it has studied. Some are detectable hundreds of kilometres downstream from the flames and have serious consequences for urban water treatment.
“You get much bigger swings in water quality,” Emelko said. “One of the biggest and most common challenges to water treatment is not water contamination, but large swings in water quality.”
Emelko said nutrients from fires can show up far downstream and last for years.
“They can sit there in riverbeds and reservoirs and can create a legacy of effects.”
Natural Resources Canada says those effects could double the amount of boreal forest burned by the end of this century compared with recent records.
Meanwhile, those forests are the source of much of our water. Two-thirds of the water used in Alberta comes from forested landscapes.
“As we see these fires more frequently with more severity, the types of impacts to our water are likely to be seen more broadly,” said Silins.
Emelko said it’s time Canadians stopped thinking solely in terms of fire suppression and water treatment plants. As water demand increases, water security has to start where the water comes from, she said.
“Forests have not been managed primarily for water. They’ve been managed for fibre production and protection of life and property,” she said. “Disturbances [such as] wildfires are increasingly likely and we need to adapt.”