As Ottawa promises a better response to natural disasters, communities say they need money now

Ottawa's emergency preparedness minister has warned that this summer could be even worse than last year's record-breaking wildfire season — while communities on the front lines say they need federal money for prevention right now.

«What bothers me is that we take this wait-and-see attitude every single year,» said Don McCormick, mayor of Kimberly, a town in the B.C. interior.

«We are in a fire zone. This has been a fire area forever and we'll continue to be. We need to be doing things that are going to allow our forests to manage the fires on their own, and not put our communities in the danger that they are right now.»

McCormick's town has spent millions of dollars — much of it money obtained through provincial grants — on measures that helped protect his community last summer. A nearby fire last summer was held off thanks to controlled forest burns conducted years before.

«It is proof of the science around how to provide landscape management is there,» he said. «We just need to get the senior levels of government on board, who hold the purse strings.»

A massive wildfire last summer forced a three-week mandatory evacuation of Yellowknife. Its mayor, Rebecca Alty, said her city is using its own money to prepare for the coming fire season.

The city has dipped into its own budget to update its communication systems and hire an emergency manager, she said.

Like McCormick, she said she wants more support from higher levels of government before a disaster hits.

«The biggest thing that's missing is dollars to municipalities. When it comes to our territorial funding, we receive no funding to be emergency-prepared,» Alty said.

Provincial and territorial ministers met in Ottawa last week with federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit