This coming April 11, I strongly recommend the city council vote in favor of Trail’s transition to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050.
Our community must do its part to help mitigate the effects of our changing climate by making sure our infrastructure is able to bear the brunt of the many fires ahead of us.
I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering the horrible wildfire that broke out on the hillside above our local KBRH back in 2018.
It was a dramatic scene of water bombers and other aircraft swooping down from the sky, doing their best to contain the flames before the fire could spread to the hospital and no doubt force a mass evacuation of all patients and staff from the facility.
Any residents living in the immediate area at that time were also under threat of losing their homes in the event the fire could not be contained, but thankfully it never came to that.
The fire was put out and the crisis was averted.
I remember how bizarre and mildly frightening it was to actually see the flames across the river from my vantage point downtown.
Before then wildfires were something that existed to me mainly as smoke drifting in from some battle zone far away, but here the fire was right before me making itself only too real in what could have been the most disastrous way possible.
Since then wildfires have become almost a staple of our summer seasons here in the Kootenays.
Air quality advisories, which I had never paid serious attention to in the past, have been issued more frequently every year in light of the rampant smoke drifting into our valley, either from south of the border or elsewhere in our province.
Heat domes have become more unbearable, drying up the land and making conditions ripe for fires to break out much closer to Trail, putting the strain on our homes, our facilities, and our lives.
Grant Bennett,
Trail