It will take continued vigilance to prevent a catastrophic wildfire on the scale of the one currently devastating Fort McMurray from occurring in and around Prince George - and even that is not a guarantee according to a University of Northern British Columbia professor.
"I think it's a perpetual threat until one really converts the forest into being more fire resistant, and I wouldn't use the word fireproof because all bets are off when you have big inferno like what's happened in Fort McMurray," said Phil Burton, an associate professor in UNBC's ecosystem science and management program.
Making a forest more fire resistant means more than just removing dead trees, Burton argued. It also means pruning away the lower branches of living trees to reduce the chance of a ground fire climbing into the forest canopy.
It's when it becomes a crown fire that it can really take off, according to experts.
Burton also believes converting the forest from pine or conifer-type species to more fire-resistant one, such as birch or aspen, "should be a requirement of all silvicultural operations within 10 or 15 kilometres upwind from Prince George."
Traditionally, the peak season for forest fires is mid-July to late-August but as climate change takes hold, bringing milder winters and earlier springs, Burton said we're going to have to get used to spring fires.
"And spring fires, like we're experiencing now, are really a different beast," he said. "There's a two-week window often, after the snow melt and the leaves have completely flushed, where essentially you've got dry grass and brush in the under-story and trees that have not started pumping water yet."
If an inferno the size of the one gripping Fort McMurray does break out, it will likely come from the west and south and start within 10 kilometres of the city due to prevailing wind directions and a prevalence of coniferous trees in those areas.
That's according to the findings made in 2009 by Bruce Blackwell, an expert in fire modelling hired by the city.
Immediately outside city boundaries there is a patchwork of logging and farming that breaks up the forest, Dan Adamson, who was the city's community forest manager at the time, said Thursday.
"But when you hit the municipal boundary there's a lot of Crown land and private land that is still forested in a fairly-contiguous way and that's kind of the concern, a fire getting into that area," Adamson said.
The danger to the city would come in the form of "fire brands" or baseball-size pieces of burning material that get blown into the city, creating a multitude of spot fires, according to Adamson.
"Hundreds of thousands of fire brands" were behind the devastation that struck Slave Lake in 2011, where about a third of the homes in the Alberta community of 7,000 were destroyed.
The "largest combined fire in city history" occurred in Prince George in 2008 when Canfor's North Central Plywoods plant went up in flames. Fire brands were believed to have lit fires in a pile of nearby CN Rail ties, and at Interior Warehousing, on Great Street about two kilometres to the north.
In 2003, a massive blaze destroyed 238 homes and forced the evacuation of 30,000 people in Kelowna. Aided by funding from the provincial government, the City of Prince George initiated an all out campaign in the years that followed to rid the city beetle-killed pine which could provide the fuel for a similar event.
By 2010, much of the work within city limits was done. That year, the Fraser-Fort George Regional District, the Lheidli T'enneh and the City signed a letter of intent to work towards securing a community forest licence to cover 38,000 hectares outside city limits.
By the time a proposal was ready to take to the provincial government, the City and the Lheidli T'enneh had withdrawn from the process, but the B.C. Cattlemens' Association had signed on - another intent was to increase the amount of agricultural land in the area.
However, the provincial government denied the application.
"It didn't meet the intent of community forest licences," FFGRD adminstrator Jim Martin said Thursday.
Prince George Fire Rescue chief John Iverson said it would take a major forest fire, something on the scale of the massive Bobtail Lake fire south of Vanderhoof last summer but closer to the city, to create a Fort McMurray-size inferno here.
In B.C., there is a two-stage emergency preparedness process that begins with an alert warning residents to get ready to evacuate followed by an order to move out immediately.
In Fort McMurray, conditions changed so quickly that authorities resorted to a "tactical evacuation" in which the order was given without any prior warning. Added to the trouble, residents were limited to one escape route.
"In our case, we're fortunate that we have multiple directions to go so we just pick the safest route and that would be our first step," Iverson said.
If it got to that point, Iverson said the Provincial Emergency Program would come into play and help with finding accommodation and other support for evacuees. And as long as they're not putting themselves in danger, Iverson said firefighters would remain on the scene to protect property as much as possible.
If a wildfire large enough to threaten Prince George did break out, outlying communities would likely be hit first. Martin said the FFGRD has advance plans in place that spell out such things as evacuation routes and marshalling points for the more 50 settlements in its jurisdiction
But he said there could be instances when an evacuation order will be issued immediately.
"(If) the threat is right there - lightning strike or a human caused fire that all of a sudden is threatening a community of homes or an industrial complex - we would probably move to an order right away."
Martin urges property owners to be prepared ahead of time.
The B.C. Wildfire Prevention Branch's website holds a "Fire Smart" brochure that shows homeowners the steps they can take to keep their houses and outbuildings from being destroyed in a wildfire.
Ways to assemble a 72-hour emergency preparedness kit can also be found on the internet.
