Officials knew about bushfire risk in Tantallon for years but did nothing, residents say

Nick Horne looks across the river at the old bridge foundations on a trail in Westwood Hills, where he’s been hoping for years to see an emergency exit for his Upper Tantallon neighborhood.

But the bridge has yet to be built – and it’s on Nova Scotia Power land.

“I think it’s a bit of political football in terms of funding and political will,” Horne said on Thursday.

The County and Regional Municipality of Halifax had known for years that the area was an extreme fire risk, in part due to previous reports with recommendations that no one has implemented.

Then came the Tantallon fire that started on May 28 near Hammonds Plains Road – about 15 miles outside of Halifax. Officials have said more than 200 buildings were destroyed in the wildfire, including about 150 homes.

Horne was on his way out of the neighborhood with his children when they saw flames in the surrounding trees. He stopped to bang on neighbors’ doors and warned them to leave before getting back into his car.

But instead of driving to safety through the fire exit Horne and others had planned to install at the end of Wright Lake Run on the north side of the subdivision, he sat in a long line of cars waiting to get through the only exit on the south side. to drive. .

“If the wind had turned, there was no way out for us,” said Horne. “We would all have died.

“It was the most emotional experience I think I’ve ever had.”

Horne said locals requested a county fire assessment through the FireSmart program, knowing that Westwood would be in deep trouble during an emergency.

To date, more than 40 NS communities have participated in the program, with employees mapping risks and educating residents and first responders about wildfire safety.

In 2016, wildfire prevention officer Kara McCurdy determined that the north end of Westwood Hills was at “extreme” risk, with southern parts at high and moderate risk.

Her conservation plan made a number of recommendations, including creating a gated emergency road to Wright Lake Run, installing dry hydrants since there are none, and creating a community buffer of thinned trees around the subdivision. Dry hydrants provide a water supply when a municipal system is not available.

Armed with that information, Horne said he spent years working with former Area Councilman Matt Whitman, city officials, MLA Ben Jessome and Nova Scotia Power to place the bridge and clear the exit to a secondary road on provincial Crown land.

At one point, Horne said two old sections of the Macdonald Bridge were set aside during the Big Lift project to make that exit usable. The old bridge foundations date from a time when access was needed to the old Bowater Mersey land. Nova Scotia Power has a dam in the area and therefore owns land there.

But everything “stalled at EMO and basically they ignored us,” Horne said of Halifax’s emergency management agency.

Even before the risk assessment, Halifax received a 2013 study from Dalhousie University that was funded in part by the City of Halifax and developed a model to identify the area’s future forest risk from wildfires.

“We found very high risks in some places where the forest directly contacts residential homes,” said Eric Rapaport, co-author of the report and a professor in Dalhousie University’s School of Planning.

The report suggested that the city enact bylaws to clear space around residential homes, limit continued development in wildland-urban interface areas, educate private citizens in high-risk areas, and to “manage WUI areas for fire risk.”

“It’s a little frustrating when we don’t see things change and then get into trouble,” Rapaport said.

Rapaport said he was surprised to see the Tantallon fire spread so quickly. But in the aftermath, he used data to see that there were large areas of fast-burning trees in most of the affected subdivisions — which McCurdy’s assessment also noted.

‘The proof was there’

“We could have identified those trees and we could have started removing some of that risk 10 years ago,” Rapaport said.

“The evidence was there.”

Tory Rushton, Nova Scotia’s minister of natural resources and renewable energy, told reporters Thursday that putting hydrants and new exits in affected subdivisions “would actually fall on the local municipality,” while creating buffer zones could fall to the county if they are needed. in Crownland.

Erica Fleck, chief of the emergency management division at the City of Halifax, told CBC News on Wednesday that she has been working on the Westwood egress problem for years and has a list of 10 similar subdivisions where fire hazards could be a hazard.

“We know it’s a problem, everyone knows it’s a problem, but it’s not an easy button. We don’t have a country there…so it gets complicated. And it’s not the answer anyone wants to hear, but it is unfortunately not an easy solution,’ said Spot.

The City of Halifax recently requested a staff report on installing a new Westwood exit ramp. Another report on how much it would cost to install outlets in similar areas in the regional municipality is expected by December.

Public Works Secretary Kim Masland said Thursday that Halifax staff approached her office last week to “give them provincial land to create more exits within HRM” and predicted more will soon be created in neighborhoods in throughout Nova Scotia.