As wildfires forced the closure of Whiteshell Provincial Park last week, CBC has learned a 2021 report alerted the province to what an out-of-control blaze in the area would look like, warning such an event would lead to catastrophic loss of life and property.
The report, which was commissioned by the Manitoba government, included 10 recommendations. Four years later, it appears none have been fully implemented, though the province says that work is “ongoing.”
“Not surprised,” one longtime resident said when told about the report’s trajectory.
Shaun Harbottle has lived in the park for decades, and owns Crescent Beach Cottages and a general store in West Hawk Lake.
“Very little gets done in the Whiteshell,” he said. “Our last big burn was 2016, and they said they were going to fix it then and they didn’t.”
Harbottle is referring to the 5,800-hectare fire that hit northeast of Caddy Lake in May of that year, forcing some evacuations within Whiteshell Provincial Park.
This year, the southeastern Manitoba park faced a threat after an out-of-control wildfire began along the provincial border, near Ingolf, Ont.
That led the Manitoba government to make the unprecedented decision to evacuate the entire park and declare a local state of emergency on Thursday, ahead of the May long weekend, at which point that fire had grown to 27,000 hectares and crossed the Ontario border into Manitoba.
Report highlights limited road access
The 70-page April 2021 report, titled the Whiteshell Provincial Park Wildfire Management Strategy, was never publicly released. CBC obtained it through freedom of information laws.
The report was a result of a request for proposals issued in October 2020 for the development of a strategy to “reduce public risk from catastrophic wildfire” in the park.
It highlights a combination of factors that make the 2,800-square-kilometre park, located near the Ontario border, particularly vulnerable.
CBC News learned a 2021 report alerted the province to what an out-of-control blaze in the Whiteshell would look like, warning such an event would lead to catastrophic loss of life and property. However, it appears that none of the report’s 10 recommendations have been fully implemented in the four years since its release.
Homes in the park are surrounded by one-lane roadways, dense treelines and numerous lakes, making it difficult to get out in the event of an emergency, according to the report.
“Any road closures from either traffic accidents or wildfire may result in large-scale entrapment situations leading to catastrophic events, including significant loss of life if evacuees become stranded along transportation corridors,” the report said.
The park is home to about 3,500 cabins, along with businesses scattered throughout a vast area.
Surrounding those businesses and cabins are highly flammable trees, located close to properties and sometimes far away from a body of water that would help slow a fire, according to the report.
The report simulated wildfires in the park and along a 20-kilometre radius around it to determine the behaviour of a fire in the area.
It found the communities of Falcon Lake and Rennie, along with the Pointe du Bois area, were at the highest risk because of their limited access to escape routes and, in the case of north Rennie, its distance from water.
Harbottle’s home and business are located near the southern shore of West Hawk Lake.
“If a fire were to start on my property here, everybody on the east end wouldn’t have a way out. If a fire starts at the top of the hill, I don’t have a way out. So it is a problem, and … it needs to be looked at,” he said.
10 recommendations
Ten broad recommendations were made in the report, with the objective they were to be completed within five years.
They included:
- Formalizing safety zones to be used by residents as a last resort if evacuation routes are unsafe to use.
- Sharing the report’s results with local first responders and working with them to identify gaps in evacuation route planning.
- Completing an internal review to investigate creating alternative routes for evacuations.
- Using the report to discuss with government officials which roads in the park should be upgraded.
- Completing an evacuation simulation to understand the time required to evacuate an area.
- Completing an “exposure analysis” to help residents understand how to mitigate risks.
- Encouraging businesses and residents to implement FireSmart principles, such as clearing nearby trees and utilizing sprinklers.
- Conducting controlled burns in areas to control pests and vegetation.
The Falcon Lake area, the Highway 44 corridor and Highway 312 were identified as the top areas to improve evacuation routes.
A government spokesperson didn’t offer details on what happened with the recommendations in the report, but said a number of factors have changed since it was published in 2021.
Many of the recommendations in the report are “ongoing,” and the current fire situation “will inform any future steps,” the spokesperson said in a written statement Friday.
Further details may be provided once the urgency of the current wildfire situation subsides, the spokesperson said.
CBC asked Mike Flannigan, a wildfire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., who was not involved in writing the 2021 Manitoba report, to review it.
He said its recommendations were useful, and prepared with the type of situation that emerged last week in mind.
The Whiteshell is a “flammable landscape,” with lots of vegetation that would increase the intensity of a fire, he said.
Building new escape routes in high-risk areas can be costly but is necessary, said Flannigan.
“You have to build roads. And yeah, it’s expensive and it fragments the landscape, but you need multiple escape routes,” he said.
“They are planning for events like we’re seeing unfold in front of us this week.”
