As people across B.C. watched the disaster roll out in Slave Lake, Alberta, many will be asking the question, could it happen here in my town? Could it happen in Kimberley?

The short answer, of course it could. Kimberley is surrounded by forest and if a forest fire got away, particularly coming in from the St. Mary Valley with the prevailing winds, it could be a very bad situation indeed.

However, Kimberley is also one of the most proactive communities in the province in terms of doing interface work and learning the lessons of the Kelowna fires.

"All that interface work, that's exactly what we've been preparing for for years, ever since Kelowna," said Firefighter Steve Munshaw.

"We do have an emergency plan we work on continuously," said Mayor Jim Ogilvie. "We have plans for getting a command centre set up. We don't have an emergency warning system like they do in Alberta, but they weren't able to use it in the case of Slave Lake. That was a fire storm, in the tops of trees with winds from 70 to 100 kilometres an hour. It was a unique situation, but a good reminder for us.

"A fire coming down the St. Mary Valley and then up through the Nature Park is our highest danger."

The City of Kimberley has done extensive fire interface work on City-owned lands and some private lands such as those owned by Teck and the Kimberley Alpine Resort, have been treated as well.

Essentially these areas were thinned and dangerous ladder fuels removed.

Ogilvie says that no matter how much work the city does, a fire in the forest is burning through untreated, unthinned areas, but the interface work done could give firefighters a chance to slow a fire down.

"The reason we are doing the work is to keep distance between the trees, keep the flames low, and make sure the fire doesn't get into the tree tops. That at least gives us an opportunity to fight it. That would be under ordinary circumstances, but when you get a 100 kilometre per hour wind, that's different."

Kimberley has been recognized for its proactive interface work.

"We've received two awards for our work," Ogilvie said. "The first was last fall at the UBCM when Kimberley and a few other communities were given an award by the Minister of Forests and then we received another just recently. We're definitely ahead of other communities in the province and work is continuing.

"But people do tend to get a little complacent and something like what happened in Slave Lake is a good reminder that we need to continue to work on it."