The mayor of Kamloops says he made the most of some face time with the Prime Minister and others last week to push for some important local issues including disaster preparations.

Ken Christian says with two historic wildfire season back to back and the possibility of a third ahead of us, he discussed preparations with Justin Trudeau, First Nations leaders, and wildfire officials.

“They are predicting the potential for another bad fire season based on the early season indicators,” he said. “I was curious as to how we arrange for deployment of federal resources particularly the armed forces.”

Christian adds the city is working with Prince George and Kelowna on things like preparing for wildfire evacuations with some good input from First Nations leaders.

“And in particular cultural sensitivity in terms of hosting evacuees things like language, food, those types of things were expressed by the First Nations participants. So it was a good meeting.”

Christian says valuable lessons were learned in 2017 when the city hosted thousands of wildfire evacuees.