Military members on southern Alberta’s CFB Suffield say they are working closely with the community and reviewing their own policies to ensure that landowners never need to feel threatened by wildfires on the base ever again.

On September 11, 2017, a large grass fire burned through a large section of land south of Oyen, forcing the evacuation of about a dozen homes.

Officials at CFB Suffield admitted that the fire was sparked after crews detonated an unexploded bomb that was found near an oil and gas site.

“Although fire mitigation measures were, as always, present on the scene, and the fire was immediately and continuously fought, the fire did get out of control and it did escape the base to the surrounding properties to the north. That same fire resulted in quite extensive damages to the community,” said Lt.-Col. Mike Onieu.

Onieu says that a board of inquiry was convened as a result of the fire to learn all the facts and determine what recommendations could be made to ensure that a similar situation never happens again.

“The most important of them was that the board of inquiry recommended a comprehensive review of our policies and our procedures about how we conduct firefighting and fire mitigation on the base and how we make decisions about that.”

He says the report also included a review of equipment and personnel, the implementation of a fire mitigation plan, the development of a fireguard, the improvement of their communications plan and equipment and the installation of services, such as water, in some of the outlying areas of the base.

“Generally speaking, the recommendations that the board of inquiry made were absolutely consistent with what we knew previously and it’s important to understand that we have not been waiting for the board of inquiry to be completed to make improvements to how we do business. Since the very day the fire started and was put out, we have actively been working to improve and mitigate the risk of this happening again,” Onieu said.

Onieu says the military’s fire department has been working with surrounding fire departments to improve the communication process and even provide training should the army find itself in the need of more help with a fire on the base.

He says there is a desire among professional and volunteer firefighters to lend whatever support they can, but Onieu says that coming onto the firing range of a military base is a lot different than any sort of environment a municipal firefighter would come across.

“Like any military base, we are reluctant to have people come onto the base because of safety and security concerns. This is a live fire training area and every time that someone steps onto it, it’s a risk to life and limb because of unexploded ordinance.”

Onieu says that those firefighters would need to be trained to recognize the dangers they could potentially come across.

“At a minimum, they would require the basic safety and awareness training that anyone needs when entering what we call ‘the range’. There may be more as well, specific to fire departments, and that’s what we are developing right now.”

The inquiry’s report is also helping with the claims of landowners who are seeking compensation from the Crown.

Onieu says that they expect to see over 20 claims of compensation as a result of the fire and the military has added more staff to help process those.

The time it takes from the landowner submitting their claim to when they are given a cheque varies.

“It’s different for each individual landowner. They’ll send up their claim. If there are more questions or information required to help the processing, then there will be a back and forth negotiation as we gather more information. Once all the information is gathered, it would be a fairly quick process if it’s determined that compensation is necessary.”

Onieu says that the grassfire has rapidly improved a lot of the communication CFB Suffield had with its neighbours, something that the military had been working on even before the fire took place.

“It was hastened by the fact that we had a fire and we’ve been having a lot of face-to-face communication with those people.”

He knows that the landowners aren’t happy with the fact that the fire took place and that’s understandable, but he hopes the fact that the military is working hard to fix things helps reassure them.

“Nobody is happy. The affected landowners aren’t happy. I won’t speak for them but I would say my hope is that we have provided them with some assurance that we are sincere in our efforts to prevent this from happening again and that we are taking every possible measure to expedite the claims process and make our own improvements on the base.”

For now, Onieu says they will be looking at where fire mitigation measures will be put in place and what they’ll look like, but it’s not likely that anything physical will be put in place this year.

“I think we have a pretty good idea where the dangers are; they’re to the north and the northeast. I expect that’s where our priorities are and then we’ll go from there.”

In any given year, CFB Suffield detonates between 100 and 200 unexploded bombs.

The inquiry report has not been released to the public pending the possibility of litigation.

(With files from Bill Macfarlane)