It seems many more home owners in Kamloops are starting to gear up for this year’s fire season.

Kamloops Fire Rescue Life Safety Educator Jeff Pont says they’ve already gotten around 100 requests so far this year for a FireSmart review, noting that’s what they would normally get for an entire year.

“Over the last month we’ve been doing a lot of them,” said Pont.  “We’re starting to see a lot of results of that. A lot of people removing those pesky cedars we always talk about.”

He says property owners are starting to understand the FireSmart program does work.

“A lot of the strata complexes are removing all cedars from their properties,” said Pont.  “We’re actually starting to see a lot of buy-in with the FireSmart stuff. I think the people of Kamloops are doing a great job.”

Pont notes the popularity of a free wood chipping program they launched in Juniper last month is adding to the local buy-in.

“We kind of came up with that based on our higher-risk areas.  Juniper, we had that one full in less than 24 hours,” said Pont.  “We’ve been working on Rose Hill.”

The City of Kamloops has yet to fill the FireSmart coordinator position it created earlier this year.