The Vancouver Fire Rescue Service says there’s been a drastic increase and record number of fire calls in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2022. Fire information officer Matthew Trudeau says the service responded to more than 21-hundred fire calls in the first six months of this year, a more-than 30 per cent increase over last year. He says many of the calls have been related to single-room occupancy buildings where drug users overdose after using butane torches with flame-locking mechanisms. The fire service says people should check their smoke alarms regularly, and encourages smokers to properly put out cigarettes while urging people to use battery-powered lights rather than candles indoors.
The federal NDP says the Liberal government should extend a deadline for small businesses to repay pandemic-era emergency loans. BC M-P Richard Cannings, the NDP’s small business critic, says the government should extend the deadline to repay loans under the Canada Emergency Business Account. The program provided interest-free loans to businesses hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the federal government has already extended the repayment and interest-free periods to the end of this year. Cannings will be in Penticton today and joined by the city’s chamber of commerce to call on the government to extend the program’s deadlines once again.
The Vancouver International Airport says it’s stopping construction work on one of its airfields after finding First Nations artifacts on the sites. The airport says it suspended the work and told the Musqueam Indian Band of the potential finds, sending the items to an archeology lab for analysis. Airport president Tamara Vrooman says the airport is on the Musqueam’s traditional territories, and finding artifacts on the lands wasn’t unexpected. The airport has a sustainability and friendship agreement with the Musqueam, and part of the deal involves protecting archeological finds.
Researchers at UBC and environmentalists say changing laws granting legal rights to physical ecosystems, such as the Fraser River estuary, could help stem the tide of environmental destruction. Researchers from the university and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation have released a new report exploring so called rights of nature laws that protect the Fraser River estuary by it legal rights, like personhood extended to corporations. Kristen Walters, one of the report’s authors, says the Fraser River estuary supports more than 100 species at risk, and extending legal protections would support ecological recovery. Walters says the legal landscape now doesn’t effectively account for the cumulative effects of industrialization, and rights-of-nature laws elsewhere have been successfully implemented in a number of different ways.
The Yukon government says it’s working to support residents being evacuated from a pair of small communities in the territory due to wildfire activity. The village of Mayo was evacuated over the weekend, and the northern community of Old Crow was placed under an evacuation order Wednesday. Yukon Social Services Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee and Community Services Minister Richard Mostyn say evacuations due to wildfires can be traumatic, urging those affected to register for support services. They say registering with Emergency Support Services upon arriving in Whitehorse will allow for better supports, and thanked people, First Nations governments and local businesses for stepping up to help evacuated residents.
The BC Wildfire Service says favourable weather and firefighting activity has allowed it to reclassify the massive Donnie Creek wildfire as no longer being a wildfire of note. Sharon Nickel with the Prince George Fire Centre says 90 millimetres of rain and suppression activities have kept the fire at bay, though it’s still considered out of control. Nickel says it’s a positive development, but the blaze will likely remain on the province’s list of wildfires for some time, and there are upwards of 400 currently burning in B-C. Elsewhere in the province, the service says half a dozen wildfires in the fire zone around Burns Lake are now classified as being held.