On a hot, dry night in July 2024, a lightning storm passed across the north end of Kootenay Lake, leaving several columns of smoke rising from the heavily forested Argenta area.

Rik Valentine of Argenta drove around to the Lardeau side of the lake in the very early morning so he could look across the  water and take stock of the situation.

He saw three fires, and immediately got in radio contact with the crew and dispatchers of the community's fire brigade, also known as the Argenta Safety and Preparedness Society (ASAP), of which he is the crew leader. Because he knows the geography of the area intimately, he knew immediately how to get to one of the fires and what water sources would be nearby.

"I knew that at least one of the strikes we could access by going up through the woodlot, up high," he said.

"You have to decide, OK, should we, in fact, respond? Is it within our scope? Can we do it? Is it safe? Safety is always number one, right? So, it's a dry, dry hillside, but I knew one little water source there, so we made the call to go ahead."

Valentine called the BC Wildfire Service to discuss the situation and the ASAP crew was actioning the fire with water and certified fallers by 9 a.m.

"So they knew. It wasn't a surprise to them ... I was able to talk to them on the radio as they were surveying the new fires by helicopter and I was fortunate talking to be somebody I knew, so there were no surprises going on."

When BCWS arrived they left about ten workers to work alongside the ASAP crew while others went on to develop a plan for the other two fires nearby.

Who is qualified to fight a wildfire?

This action by Valentine and crew came at a time when some new questions are being asked in B.C. about who is allowed to fight a forest fire, who can train fire fighters and supervise them. At least three regional district boards, including the Regional District of Central Kootenay, in letters to Forest Minister Ravi Parmar, have objected to some aspects of new provincial initiative intended to give more fire response roles to community members.

In 2022 the province formed the Cooperative Community Wildfire Response (CCWR) program, set up to train and supervise rural community members to assist with firefighting.

This was a response to controversies over the past few fire seasons in which local B.C. community members have either defied evacuation orders and stayed to fight a fire, or were refused by BCWS when they offered their expertise and equipment to help fight one. Several communities against the forest ministry, saying local residents' expertise, local knowledge and equipment were being wasted.

To enrol in the CCWR, a group must be self-organized as a society or as some other legal entity, and must take specific training from the BCWR. Only communities that do not have structural fire departments may enrol. The things that these neighbourhood groups are allowed and not allowed to do are clearly spelt out in the .

They may transport and supply resources (such as personnel, equipment and supplies), they may do mop-up work after the fire (for example, cooling ash pits), and they may patrol to prevent flare-ups.

But they are not allowed to attack or suppress a wildfire, enter an area that is under an evacuation order, or move/deploy BCWS resources.

According to the ministry there are 15 groups in the southern interior in various stages of signing up the the program. After local groups are trained and established they can be signed on as temporary employees and be paid for their work during a wildfire.

At the time of the Argenta fire in 2024, the ASAP group was in the process of signing up with the CCWR, and was not yet subject to CCWR's rules, Valentine said.

Pump on a stump

Valentine moved to Argenta when he was a child and has never left. In the old days, he says, forest service personnel were locals who knew everyone, and fires were fought by locals.

"The forest service know who was good at what. They knew every road and trail. They knew who could fix a pump on the stump out in the bush. They knew who could fall dangerous trees. And maybe most importantly, they knew who was a good cook, because on those days, you camped on the fire, and at six o'clock you were on the fire, ready to work."

More than 20 years ago, Valentine and others started gearing up to protect their remote community from fires. They started collecting equipment, with partial funding from the Regional District of Central Kootenay, but with only volunteer help. They built a fire shed. They got the late Dick Brenton, and later Valentine, trained and qualified to teach the S-100 and eventually the S-185 courses.

"You don't always have water on a fire, so you have to know how to deal with that when you have no water. And there's danger trees to deal with."

He added there is a lot to know about how to organize yourselves in an incident command system and how to set up your own dispatch system.

"Argenta has been a stronghold of independent thinkers and doers for decades," said Deb Borsos, who is one of the original volunteers. "We don't find it strange that for 20 years already we have organized and co-ordinated our own fire crew to attack fires when they first hit."

Borsos has also worked, at various times since 2012, for the provincial government doing recovery work in communities after flooding and wildfires. 

In last summer's fire, Borsos and the rest of  the ASAP crew prepared the community for evacuation, organized and expedited various equipment and supplies, put up signage and ribbons, maintained gravity water supplies, watched for spot fires, brushed out out properties, moved flammable material away from buildings, installed water lines and sprinklers, organized food for their crew, and kept in touch with evacuees.

This was all done with the knowledge and co-operation of BCWS who were familiar with the group's capabilities and who paid some of the ASAP crew members to do this work.

Even though the fire grew to almost 20,000 hectares and of Argenta and Johnsons Landing, no structures were burned and no one was injured.

More bureaucracy

Valentine and Borsos are concerned about two aspects of how B.C. is rolling out the CCWR. One is the rule that a CCWR group is not allowed to fight a fire.

'If responding promptly or remaining to do structure protection are not options acceptable to government I suspect a lot of these crews will respond anyway," Valentine said. "And it will be a less than ideal situation."

He said there will be groups with resources in rural communities who want to be able to respond to a fire that starts near their community, and will either attack it while it's small or defend their homes if it is spreading.

"I believe the best way to do this is with training, good communication, and in collaboration with Forest Service crews."

The second concern is that the province intends to introduce a third party between the BCWS and the communities. It wants regional districts to do the vetting and administration, and organize the training, for CCWR fire safety crews. In an email to the Nelson Star, the forest ministry stated that despite this regional district role, CCWR groups would still operate under the auspices of BCWS in the event of an actual fire.

Valentine said this would slow things down by inserting an extra level of bureaucracy into a situation in which it is "critical to try to mount a fast response to a wildfire start before it grows out of control. In the S-100 firefighting course it’s known as the 10 o’clock rule, or catch it while it’s small before daytime heating begins."

He said this is where a trained and equipped fire response crew with experienced leaders can get the jump on a fire that starts near their community, while resources from BCWS can take hours or days to get there.

He said regional districts have no experience with any of this, and the Regional District of Central Kootenay agrees.

In a Jan. 28 letter to Forest Minister Ravi Parmar, RDCK board chair Aimee Watson said the regional district does not have the staff or the expertise to take on the new project of training and administering wildfire crews.