By: Niveja Assalaarachchi, News Writer

Ahead of the expected wildfire season, the City of Burnaby has opened a new wildfire detection system across different points of the city, including on Lhuḵw’lhuḵw’áyten (Burnaby Mountain). The system includes new technology such as “ground-based sensors and strategically placed smoke detection cameras to identify early signs of wildfire, such as heat and smoke, in near real time,” according to an announcement from the City. The project, which is funded via an agreement with Trans Mountain, comes a year before the city’s planned full-scale emergency exercise which will use the new system.  

In a statement to The Peak, the City of Burnaby said the new technology would aid emergency services to “respond quickly, helping to contain small fires before they grow and protecting nearby neighbourhoods, critical infrastructure, and forested areas.”

The City noted that Lhuḵw’lhuḵw’áyten is one of the municipality’s richly forested areas, and the technology would add a “layer of protection in this area, while supporting broader wildfire readiness efforts across the city.” The City also shared in a document that the mountain is “unceded land of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwxwú7mesh sníchim speaking peoples,” and today is a city-designated conservation area.

The Peak reached out to Sarah Thompson, director of emergency management and business continuity at SFU, to learn more about the detection system and SFU’s role in the 2027 emergency exercise. 

She highlighted that the new wildfire system is innovative: the cameras are designed to only detect anomalies in the environment. “The idea is that it does 360 degree scanning of the environment via a live feed, but it blurs any items that could be buildings, things like that,” shared Thompson. “It’s designed to look at forests and the horizon so that it can detect patterns, or rather anomalies to the patterns, like smoke plumes. It also does not record, so the privacy of our community was paramount in this initiative.” 

According to the City of Burnaby’s website, the 2027 full-scale city-wide emergency exercise is a “multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, multi-discipline exercise designed to evaluate the operational capability of interdependent emergency management systems” in the municipality. The city shared that the test, which may occur in 2027, will aim to simulate “the high stress environments that unfold during actual response conditions.” Although no details about the type of emergency this exercise plans to simulate, it will involve “multiple City departments, engagement of First Nation Host Communities, neighbouring municipalities, government and regulatory agencies, non-government stakeholders and community response partners.”

Thompson added, the exercise is planned to “test our decision making capabilities at our Safety and Risk Services Emergency Management Program,” SFU’s leadership program that “looks at the community needs and how we’re supporting large-scale disasters.” Additionally, the team has an emergency shelter that can host 125 people. According to SFU, there are almost 29,000 undergraduates alone that attend SFU, many of whom attend classes on the mountain. 

The Burnaby tank farm expansion adds more tanks between the existing ones, meaning that “buffer space that was built originally to prevent the spreading of a potential fire from one tank to another will be compromised.” Following the expansion, there have been concerns raised by SFU leaders, the City of Burnaby, and community members about the heightened risk of a fire, and the potential entrapment of the people on Burnaby Mountain in the case of a tank farm explosion. 

To help SFU community members stay safe this summer, Thompson stressed, “it’s really important to think about [emergency planning] ahead of time.” She highlighted how your commute to campus could be impacted in the event of a disaster and carrying emergency provisions or resources “would better prepare you if something unexpected happened.” 

Thompson also identified support systems as being key in the event of a disaster. “What is your network in the local community?” She urged individuals to talk “about disasters with that network beforehand to think through what you might do with friends, with family, with loved ones.” 

Download the SFU Safe app, which has access to campus services in the event of a natural disaster and/or other disturbances on campus.