Above the Sunshine Coast Highway there is no regional main and no hydrant. The fire protection area covers 28.5 of Area D's 143 square kilometres.
Where Upper Roberts Creek sits, and the other places we attend
around Roberts Creek. Every name on the map is a link.
A term in the community plan rather than a street sign
Upper Roberts Creek is not a road. It is the phrase Official Community Plan Bylaw 641 uses for the part of Roberts Creek that sits above the Sunshine Coast Highway, and the plan uses it in the sentence that matters most to anyone who owns a building up here.
Section 13 of the bylaw states that the regional system serves "lower Roberts Creek generally between the Sechelt boundary and the Sunshine Coast Highway", and that "Properties on Flume Road, Lockyer Road, upper Roberts Creek, B&K Road and Largo Road are served by private wells or community wells." The highway is the line. Below it there are mains and meters. Above it there are wells, no meters, and no hydrants anywhere.
The plan area covers approximately 8,000 square hectares, its northern boundary lies inside the Sechelt Provincial Forest, and the bylaw describes it as rural settlement on parcel sizes predominantly larger than 2,000 square metres. Large lots, long driveways, trees to the property line.
Most of Electoral Area D is outside the protection area
The Roberts Creek Volunteer Fire Department has served the community since 1969 and covers a fire protection district of roughly 28.5 square kilometres from a single hall at 1302 Roberts Creek Road. Statistics Canada records the land area of Electoral Area D as 143 square kilometres. Those two numbers put about four-fifths of the electoral area, by area, outside the district the department is funded to protect, and the part left outside is the upper country: Crown land, logging roads and the ground above the settled strip.
The regional district's Community Wildfire Protection Plan of 2021 states that much of the study area is characterized by a high wildfire risk, and that the geography allows most locations only one or two points of access. One of its recommended actions was to make wildfire a development permit area in this community plan. Policy 5.25 of the plan itself calls for the regional district, with other agencies, the community and First Nations, to develop a program to reduce the potential for fires in the interface area.
What came to the June 2021 fire was aircraft
A wildfire was discovered at about four in the afternoon on Saturday 26 June 2021 near the Lower Tube trail, on Crown land north-east of where Lockyer Road meets Grauman Road. It was declared under control at 1:09 p.m. the following day. It burned 0.7 hectares, about 1.7 acres, and the cause was undetermined.
The response says more than the size does. Two air tankers came from Kamloops with a spotter aircraft, two helicopters came from Sechelt with water buckets, and eleven firefighters worked the ground. The Roberts Creek volunteers were on standby. Dorthe Jakobsen described the burned area as less than a sports field. Sean Eckford said it was pretty dramatic for the first little bit, but then it calmed down pretty fast.
In October 2023 more than twenty mature trees, some up to 96 centimetres across and over 125 years old, were cut and removed from Crown land above Roberts Creek, apparently for firewood, and a burnt trailer and a boat were dumped there. The Conservation Officer Service said the activity had been going on for years. Nobody lives on that ground.
Brush can only be burned legally on about thirty days a year
Roberts Creek is the one part of the regional district carved out of the standard burn-pile rules. Fire Protection Bylaw 631 exempts it and points instead to the Roberts Creek Smoke Control Bylaw 598. Under that bylaw, backyard burning is limited to vegetative yard and garden waste originating on the property, and only between 1 and 15 April and between 15 October and 15 November, when ventilation conditions are favourable. Burning garbage, construction waste or toxic material is not allowed. A land clearing fire needs a $25 permit and burning without one carries a $250 penalty. Campfires are allowed year round but the fire chief can ban them in high risk periods.
For an absent owner that adds up to a practical problem. A contractor's brush pile left in May cannot lawfully be burned until mid-October, and it sits beside the building through the whole fire season.
What a check in Upper Roberts Creek covers
Well head, pump house and pressure tank, plus the breaker feeding the pump once power is back
Heat holding, or the house emptied of water and the pump switched off for the season
Standing brush, slash piles and needle build-up within the defensible space around the structure
The driveway for its whole length: windfall, washout and whether an engine could reach the house today
Doors, windows, outbuildings, gates and any equipment or fuel stored on site
Wood stacked against walls and under decks, and gutters cleared before fire season
Any private hydrant, cistern or on-site tank, which must be serviced and tested annually under bylaw 631
Signs of cutting, dumping or vehicle traffic on or beside the property boundary
Photographs of every item, dated and filed within the day
Most home policies impose a condition on unoccupied dwellings. Someone competent has to inspect the building on a stated schedule during the heating months, in many policies at gaps no longer than four days, unless the water is off and the system drained. Wordings are not identical between companies, so the number that applies to your house is the one your own policy prints.
What it costs
A scheduled check at Upper Roberts Creek is
$55 a visit, plus
$10 travel. The travel charge is the same
everywhere between Gibsons and Egmont. There is no minimum term and no joining fee.
See the full price list.
Where these facts come from
Every figure, date and quotation on this page was taken from one of these. They are
listed so you can read them yourself.
