Briefs

Prince George's city council has approved free transit on air advisory days after a one year-trial period.

The policy enables the waiving of fares for public transit during air quality advisories issued for Prince George by the British Columbia Ministry of Environment and the Northern Health Authority.

Over the one-year trial period, seven air advisory days were issued. On each air advisory day, a system-wide ridership count was undertaken in order to compare the results with the base ridership count.

On average, a seven per cent ridership increase was observed on each of the seven air advisory days.

--

The province's fire crews are testing a new, made-in-B.C. product this summer expected to speed delivery of water to small wildfires.

"Our fire crews' motto is 'hit hard and hit fast' for a good reason - when fighting wildfires, every minute counts," said B.C. Forests Minister Pat Bell. "This new bucket system, the first of its kind in the world, will help ferry water to our ground crews faster, which also frees the helicopters to spend more time dropping water on the fire lines."

The apparatus, dubbed the Bambi Bucket Off-Load Port, will be tested this summer on wildfires in the Coastal and Kamloops regions. The tube-like device allows fire crews to fill Stillwell portable water tanks from an airborne helicopter bucket. Stillwell tanks are large water bladders that are typically used to support ground crews on smaller fires.