Cranbrook’s city council agreed to move ahead with a grant application to help better protect the community from wildfires.
City officials said council voted in favour of applying to the Community Resiliency Investment Program to continue with wildfire interface treatment and FireSmart work.
The funding stream will support community-priority fuel management activities on provincial Crown land.
“Funding is scaled to offer communities with lower risk of wildfire to apply for up to $100,000 and applicants with a demonstrated higher risk of wildfire to apply for up to $200,000 per year,” said city officials.
Fire Chief Scott Driver said the city will apply for the full $200,000.
“$100,000 of it is to do fuel mitigation work at the airport, in an effort to protect that asset,” said Driver. “There’s another $100,000 in the grant application to go towards the community wildfire protection plan to do an update on that.”
Driver said the updated plan will be necessary to apply for more grant funding in the future.
The other half of the grant funding will be divided further, if approved.
“Additionally, a community FireSmart committee is going to need to be struck and participated in, so we have some funds going towards that,” said Driver. “And some continued work in the FireSmart realm around getting neighbourhood recognitions and community FireSmart education and initiatives.”