The Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) wants to develop the city’s first wildland urban fire strategy to prepare for disasters, citing hotter, drier summers and development encroachment into wildland areas.
The item was noted in CEMAs 2025 Status of Emergency Preparedness in Calgary, presented Wednesday to the Emergency Management Committee.
There were two overall themes in the report, recalibrating and revitalizing, that encompassed the work the organization undertook last year. The recalibrating portion was revisiting past disaster events in the city and implementing lessons learned across all participating agencies.
Revitalizing examined the organizations capacity, and preparation for future emergency realities – be it weather, flood, cyberattacks or infrastructure incidents.
“Through these initiatives, we were able to bring new alignment to our work build capacity to make Calgary a safer and more resilient city,” said CEMA Chief Sue Henry.
While wildland urban fires only made it to the medium-risk category in the overall threat matrix, a strategy will be developed in the event a large-scale wildland fire happens in or around Calgary.
“We know our summers are getting hotter and drier. We know our communities are growing and building out into some of the more wildland urban interface areas. We also know that our friends in Calgary Fire and Calgary Parks have been doing this work every day, and they’ve been doing this work for a long period of time,” Henry told reporters.
“What we’re doing is bringing the entire agency together to do an overarching strategy to make sure that we understand all of the impacts, we understand potential mitigation, and if there’s other areas that we can improve as an agency.”
When asked about specifics of what might be included in the strategy, Henry said that they’re currently taking stock of what each department is doing already and where gaps remain.
Edmonton delivers its urban wildfire strategy
Calgary’s neighbour to the north may be able to provide some early insight into how a new urban wildfire strategy could be built. With the North Saskatchewan River winding through Alberta’s capital, along with dozens of bordering communities with mature foliage, Edmonton determined it should pursue a similar plan.
The City of Edmonton’s urban wildfire strategy was just delivered by their city administration this month. The 100-page document covers four primary pillars that look at reducing fire threat, increased education, how to respond and coordinating regional efforts.
In those areas are items that could come to play in Calgary, such as the removal of combustible vegetation, grasslands management, wildfire resilient landscapes, along with a proposed wildfire resilience overlay – similar to flood plains – that would map out wildfire-urban-interface properties in the City.
Kelowna has one of the oldest municipal-response-focused fire plans in the country. Most Canadian municipalities follow guidelines under the federal government’s FireSmart program. Those are primarily focused around the prevention of potential fires, not necessarily the response plan should a large-scale fire ignite in a city.
Up to July 2025, Calgary saw a massive increase in wildland, grass and wooded area fires, when compared with the same period in 2024. Dry winters, undergrowth and, last year, a delayed spring, were behind that year’s spike, according to Calgary fire officials.
Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly, who sits on the Emergency Management Committee, said that he’s happy to see Calgary taking further steps toward mitigating potential large-scale fires.
“We definitely are seeing changing weather patterns,” Kelly said.
“I’m definitely glad that we’re taking a look at that, because that is one of those higher risks that perhaps a few years ago was a lower risk. So now that we’re seeing it happen a little more frequently, more grass fires around Calgary, it’s good that we have a plan for how we can deal with those things when they occur.”
There’s no specific timeline for the delivery of an urban wildfire plan by CEMA.
