I now know that a lot of people have received these Hazard Assessment letters and there’s some confusion as to what they mean. Here’s my take on it….

• The CSRD is covering all the bases – they’re letting you know that there is some concern for homes/buldings/animals etc. in areas that have been hit by the fire. It doesn’t mean that you’re in a high risk area, just that the geotech technicians identified that there is some risk in your area.
• There are various types of concerns: rock fall and landslide, steep creek (which could be flooding or debris flow)
• There are ratings for all the areas throughout the fire path and they vary in intensity of potential hazard.
• The CSRD is not trying to prevent anyone from building or rebuilding, they are warning of potential issues. A detailed geotech report for your specific property or building site, if needed, will provide more detail, and possible steps to take to reduce/eliminate the hazard.

It would have been nice if each letter were personalized to let you know the intensity of hazard in each persons case, but that would have taken significant time to enter that data into each propertys’ database, and I’m not sure it can be done. So this blanket letter went out.

To try to clarify things I’ve uploaded the maps from the Geotech Report to my website, links below. I also have a link to the whole report should anyone want to read it.

In the Fire Hazard Maps file you’ll see the maps the CSRD is working from. You’ll notice on those maps some test looking either like PHA-XX where XX is a number, or AOIXX-a where XX is a number and ‘a’ is a letter. If you go to the last pages of that map file you’ll see tables where you can find those PHA or AOI numbers.

So, find your place and see which PHA and AOI numbers correspond to your location, then look in the tables lower down and you can find the hazard rating for your area. For more information contact Derek Sutherland at the CSRD: 250-833-5945 or dsutherland@csrd.bc.ca

Fire Hazards Maps

Full Geotech Report