After two historic wildfire seasons and fire activity already beginning in a new season the mayor of Quesnel says people in his community are already bracing for the worst.

Bob Simpson says the community is working hard to remove fire fuels from the interface area.

“We are very very aggressive on that front. We have a brand new community wildfire protection plan. Unlike the last one where over a ten year period of time only about ten hectares were treated out of an identified 2,200 hectares of critical fuel loading that needed to be addressed. We are using all of the resources available to us and looking at treating as much as 400 to 500 hectares.”

Simpson says they are also working on other avenues to better safeguard the community from a wildfire.

“We are in an ongoing conversation with ministry staff here to be building proactive firebreaks around the community on the crown land that is outside of our wild land urban interface. We are just in a different dynamic now where we have a collaborative and proactive partnership with our local district forests staff to deal with our more immediate risk.”

He says while the community is doing everything it can with two consecutive historic wildfire seasons and fires already popping up this year people are feeling nervous and apprehensive.