York University receives close to $400K from Natural Resources Canada to better understand planning needs of wildfire prone communities

/EIN News/ -- Toronto, March 20, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With $386,000 in funding from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) through its Build and Mobilize Foundational Wildland Fire Knowledge Program under the Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative, York University and its partners will evaluate the issues local governments face in adopting wildfire mitigation practices and determine how to scale up their mitigation efforts.

The project, Understanding and Improving Wildfire Mitigation Partnerships with Local Governments, which also received more than $100,000 in-kind from York, is led by York emergency management Associate Professor Eric Kennedy of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies in collaboration with FireSmart Canada; the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources/Aviation, Forest Fires and Emergency Services; and Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. It is particularly important today as the frequency and severity of wildfires continues to rise, increasingly threatening the health and safety of communities.

"By improving our wildfire knowledge, mitigation and response strategies, we can help reduce the impact of wildfires on our homes, communities, and economies," says the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. "The federal government is providing funding to academia, not-for-profits, community leaders, and governments to advance wildfire knowledge and strengthen wildfire preparedness and risk reduction efforts across the country ahead of the 2025 wildfire season."

Although individual residents in fire-prone areas can take various measures to protect their own properties, many come up against significant obstacles, including monetary and physical demands of the tasks. Replacing a roof or making changes to structural elements of a home or building is prohibitively expensive to many, even though the measures can have a really big impact.

“It's critically important to ensure that we explore and seize every opportunity to prevent fires throughout our communities. I am very pleased to see continued funding being directed towards the project led by York University, as it demonstrates a strong commitment to safeguarding lives, property, and the environment. Working together at all levels, is key to creating effective and sustainable fire prevention strategies,” says the Honourable Judy Sgro, Member of Parliament for Humber River-Black Creek.

That’s where local governments have a large role to play to ensure their entire communities, towns and cities are fire ready. “Things like fire breaks can help intercept forest fires before they arrive at the community and while they're still on public land,” says Kennedy, interim director of York Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Response, and Governance Institute (Y-EMERGE). “We're seeing the embers from one house igniting another house and the embers from that house igniting another house, and this chain effect now largely ceases to be a forest fire or a wildland fire and is instead an urban fire.”

He points out there are a bunch of known improvements that local governments can implement to reduce the vulnerability of individuals and families to potentially devastating wildfires.

Many local governments, however, have not been able to fully take advantage of the resources and funding available. This project will help to determine what supports local governments need to implement wildfire mitigation measures, such as encouraging the construction of more resilient neighbourhoods and building new developments with wider roads.

“We are looking at current uptake of residential mitigation by local governments and how to expand it, get people working together on this and ensure programs are designed in a way that makes it as easy as possible for communities and regions, cities and towns to tackle this really urgent problem,” says Kennedy.

Fire risk mitigation programs are designed to not only help reduce building ignition and loss but also help prevent the fire from jumping from one home or building to another, which can help save lives and property, while making it safer for firefighters.

The project will look at the social, political, institutional and resourcing barriers; strategies, programs or interventions to overcome barriers; partnerships with local governments; and best practices for establishing, monitoring and evaluating ongoing relationships.

The second piece of the project includes creating interventions to improve the uptake of fire mitigation efforts across the country and developing national surveys and case studies to gain further insights.

“One of the goals of the project is to share what we're learning, test drive some improvements and hopefully refine those over the course of the project,” says Kennedy.

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• Eric Kennedy

Sandra McLean
                    York University
                    416-2726317
                    sandramc@yorku.ca