The Mayor of Barriere says he’s a little leery when it comes to some of the recommendations from Premier David Eby’s expert task force on emergencies.

Ward Stamer says he is especially concerned about the proposal to use new technology like artificial intelligence to predict fire behaviour, telling Radio NL he hopes the BC Wildfire Service uses that technology to complement local decision making.

“Quite frankly, that back burn that occurred in the North Shuswap, a computer model said it was going to go one direction and it completely did a different thing,” Stamer said. “So if we’re going to be relying strictly on computers, I’m not entirely sure how beneficial that’s going to be.”

But Stamer – who is running for the BC Conservatives in this fall’s provincial election – also says technology like the use of drones will help crews map fire behaviour and size more quickly, as they won’t always have to wait for helicopters.

He also says he’s hoping to see smaller fires actioned more quickly, noting the massive Bush Creek East fire was burning for about a month, before it merged with the Lower East Adams Lake fire and consumed wide swaths of the North Shuswap in mid-August.

“It’ll be interesting to see how they put in the data on when you have an initial strike, what is going to actually occur,” Stamer said. “Are we actually going to be on it right away or is it going to be a wait and see approach?”

“I would like to see the government try to attain to that golden day where if there is a fire in an interface area that we try and have boots on the ground and do something within 24 hours, and of course, if it progresses fairly quickly, we have the resources necessary to be able to respond. I would have said that. I wish the government would have said that, but they didn’t.”

Stamer – who previously raised his concerns about the make up of the task force – was calling for a third-party review of the good, the bad, and the ugly of last year’s fire season.