## 4 Discussion  
Among the organization types in this survey, there was no participation recorded for the categories of 'Indigenous Community Organization', 'Fire and Law Enforcement Department', 'Chamber of Commerce', 'Canadian Red Cross', 'Fort McMurray Tourism', and 'Volunteer Organization'. Apart from the 'Indigenous Community Organization' types, it might be quite possible that the other non-recorded categories of organizations were included under the category called 'Don't want to disclose'. Furthermore, some of the participants from 'Fire and Law Enforcement Department' and 'Elected Political Leaders/Representatives' (i.e., from the Local Government) might opt to declare their affiliations with the 'Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo', because they are an integral part of the Municipal Government's business and operation. Additionally, in the case of the participants who declared their organizational type as 'Other', they were primarily affiliated with oil and gas, and environmental monitoring/assessment sectors according to their further clarifications. Note that we approached 74 professionals in different organizations, and received responses from the 24 participants, which was lower than we expected. The majority of the respondents in this survey agreed (i.e., 63%) with our proposed concept of very little to no existence of forest/vegetation in the 30 m buffer zone from the WUI. This zone also aligned with the combined zones 1 and 2 (i.e., 10 m and next 20 m from WUI, respectively) in the FireSmart guidelines that recommended as the Interface Priority Zones [11]. This 30 m priority zone could significantly reduce the potential of wildland fire propagation into the communities and minimize the potential of getting ignition into the structures due to the radiant heat of thermal energy during a wildland fire. However, we did not consider the fuel types for the zone in this study. In addition, we proposed to extend this zone up to 70 m (an additional 40 m from the 30 m zone), which is not available in the FireSmart guidelines. We assumed this 70 m buffer zone without vegetation would be very much appropriate when we observed that relevant authorities removed vegetation up to 70 m as a safety measure during the 2016 HRF event to protect the structures in the Fort McMurray communities [1]. Therefore, we would like to recommend a new priority zone up to 70 m worth to include in the FireSmart guidelines to reduce the wildland fire-induced risk for the communities. The surface of this zone could be non-combustible materials, including bare soil, surface grass, gravel, ditch (water body), asphalt, etc. We suggest planning a part of this zone for the recreational purpose for the associated communities that incudes developing bike trails, walking/running trails, tennis courts, basketball courts, public sitting arrangements (i.e., putting chairs and tables), etc. ; however, we would suggest not developing any picnic facilities because picnic fires might potentially be responsible for human-induced ignition source for wildland fires. Additionally, part of this zone could have linear water bodies with water reaction-related facilities. Interestingly, our suggested 70 m width ring road (including asphalt surface, median, slopes, and ditches) could also be a part of this proposed 70 m priority zone. Developing such a ring road around the communities was well accepted by the participants (i.e., 72%) to reduce wildland fire-induced risks. Here, we also found that having a ring road was a pressing issue for the Fort McMurray communities. Moreover, a ring road around the communities would be helpful for easy mobilization of the residents and facilitating the evacuation in any emergencies. Note that some of these development activities have already been started in the study area according to the comments received from the participants.