Went to bed in Victoria on the weekend, woke up in Beijing.
Jaundiced sky, ash-dusted cars, everybody choking like the Leafs in April. Eyes watering like they shot Bambi’s mother all over again.
This being Vancouver Island, we blamed the usual suspects (chemtrails/ Harper/zombie apocalypse/Mount St. Helens/ Grateful Dead farewell concert) but no, it turned out to be forest-fire smoke. Not a surprise, considering the hot, dry conditions.
What is a surprise is the number of people who still think it’s OK to flick their cigarette butts out the car window.
Oh, nothing burns us — not to mention the forests — like the sight of a glowing Marlboro arcing through the darkness into the bone-dry brush beside the road.
“Unfortunately, it’s a bit like the dogs that are left in hot cars,” says the RCMP’s Cpl. Darren Lagan. “It doesn’t matter how many times you highlight the inevitable risks, some people just don’t get it.”
As it turns out, though, the public is not shy about reporting such behaviour to the police, who got several complaints about butt-chuckers in the Western Communities on Monday alone. Tolerance for reckless stupidity drops as the fire risk rises.
Society has also, with smartphones in hand, become much more comfortable with public shaming. (Though perhaps not as comfortable as Hong Kong, where an environmental group has erected billboards featuring composite sketches of litterbugs, their faces based on nothing but DNA samples collected from discarded cigarette butts and other litter. The accuracy seems a bit iffy, since DNA phenotyping, as it is known, can’t determine a person’s age, but, like, jeez.)
British Columbians haven’t hesitated to call the province’s wildfire hot line at 1-800-663-5555 (or *5555 on a mobile) to report both fires and fire violations; they did so almost 15,000 times between last April and October.
Potential fines range from $115 for failing to report a forest fire to $173 for dropping a burning substance, to $345 for lighting a fire when it’s not allowed. Offenders could also, in theory, be fined $100,000 and do a year in jail if convicted in court, the Forests Ministry notes (though you could also, in theory, date a supermodel).
The most likely outcome for cigarette-tossers is a stern lecture.
“When the caller is able to provide a licence plate for the vehicle involved, one of our officers will follow up with the registered owner and let them know we are aware and have documented the complaint,” Lagan said. For most people, that should be enough.
Most people, in fact, are already doing what it takes to mitigate risk. Sooke Fire Chief Steve Sorensen says local stores are complying with a request to stop selling bundles of firewood. (There’s no point selling wood with a fire ban on, right?) At the 17 Mile Liquor Shoppe on the road to Sooke, manager Lisa McDonald just put up a little sign at the counter saying they won’t be handing out matches during fire season.
But McDonald also saw a couple of butt-chuckers while driving home from a camping trip last weekend. Who does that?
Maybe the same guy who once called the TC to complain that he was forced — forced! — to throw his butts out the window because automakers had stopped including ashtrays in every vehicle.
It was estimated a few years ago that two per cent of all B.C. forest fires are smoking-related. Often the damage is limited to a blackened patch of highway median grass, but sometimes it can be significant. In 2003, the $31-million McLure fire north of Kamloops began when a homeowner thought, wrongly, that he had put out his cigarette by grinding it underfoot.
Farther afield, four homes burned to the ground in Fort McMurray recently after someone dropped a smoke on the lawn.
Two British tourists whose discarded cigarette sparked a brush blaze were arrested in Spain last week. In April, a Minnesota driver who threw a cigarette out her window had it blow back into the car, which was destroyed in the subsequent blaze.
