Blogs
Forest Fires -Question/answer #5
Question: If a forest fire occurred in the Gananoque area, how would it impact the town? Would these impact be positive or negative and why? For example are there controlled fires in this area which are created for environmental reasons? Is there a plan to deal with forest fires that threaten the downtown of Gan? Is there an assessment of forest fire risk? Do we regularly have brush fires in this area? Are they caused by humans or lightening?
Answer:
Luckily the Town of Gananoque area is not at high risk due to the lack of large stands of trees within the town. That being said if the woods we do have were to burn, it would definitely have an adverse effect on the town. As with any large fire in our area our first concern would be the effect on the residents in the town. Our next concern would be the manpower, equipment and the resources we would need from neighboring departments. If the fire was to occur in the few heavily wooded areas we have, the only positive effect would be burning of the undergrowth in that area. The negatives would be the displacement of the animals inhabiting the area, the effect on residents, and the effect on the infrastructure (ie. hydro, Bell cable.) There are no controlled burns in the town, but the township of Leeds and the ONTARIO PARKS COMMISSION burn off certain islands in order to have new undergrowth come back and help the renewal of growth, these islands are burnt for environmental reasons. These plans would fall under Emergency Management when and if anything of a large scale was to happen the emergency group would get together and provide assistance to on scene crews. I do not believe due to the low threat level of forest fires within the town that there are any concrete forest fire plans. I believe there is no assessment of forest fire risk at this time. While we do not have regular brush fires in our actual municipality our neighbors (Leeds and Thousand Islands) do have a number and we assist with manpower and equipment; however most of these fires are caused by humans.
-Micheal Prior, Gananoque volunteer firefighter (primary source).
