Photo: runran from An island in the stream · CC BY-SA 2.035% of homes tested in Yellowhead’s area are above the radon guideline
Little of the land around Yellowhead has burned: 0.2% within 25 km since 1986, or 0.008% a year. Seismic risk runs low: $0.006 of expected damage per $1,000 of buildings a year, the typical town $0.030. Yellowhead grades C+ for hazard risk, with wildfire counted against it.
What stands out about Yellowhead’s hazards
For Yellowhead, from NRCan’s seismic model, Health Canada’s radon survey, the national burned-area record and the flood map inventory.
What Yellowhead faces
Each hazard against its own yardstick; meters run from low to high on that yardstick.
Wildfire
Earthquakes
Radon
Flood study
Yellowhead grades C+ for hazard risk
Seismic risk and radon set Yellowhead’s grade, wildfire can drag it down, and flood mapping stays out of it.
How sure: Earthquake losses are a model’s expectation over many years, not a forecast for any one. The burned-area record misses fires under about 10 ha and most grass and farm fires.
Wildfire is rare near Yellowhead: 0.2% of the land within 25 km burned since 1986, 0% within 5 km
Past fire around Yellowhead’s homes, from the national burned-area record, with the fuel within 5 km.
Around Yellowhead fire takes 0.008% of the land in a typical year, the typical Canadian town 0.000%, which is low.
Nothing inside 5 km of Yellowhead’s homes has burned since 1986, and the nearest scar is 23 km off.
Land that isn’t forest covers nearly all the ground around Yellowhead: forest fuel is 0% within 5 km and 0.6% within 25 km.
Shares of land within 5 and 25 km of populated blocks: burned at least once in 1986–2025 (CWFIS burned-area composite), forest fuel and grass (fire behaviour fuel types, 2026, 250 m grid).
Burn rate a year, towns in Manitoba · highest of 190
At 0.008% a year, Yellowhead is near the top in Manitoba: 26th of 190, behind Flin Flon (Part) (1.68%).
Each bar: the yearly average share of land within 25 km of a town’s homes that burned, 1986–2025 (CWFIS); the seven highest towns of 2,500 people or more.
Beside 2,610 Canadian towns, Yellowhead reads low, with 92% of them; only 7.5% rank higher.
Bands of the yearly burn rate: low under 0.05%, moderate under 0.25%, high under 1%, very high 1% or more; towns of 2,500 people or more.
Fire danger and active fires (CWFIS)
Canadian Wildland Fire Information System: National Burned Area Composite 1986–2025 and fire behaviour fuel types (2026), Natural Resources Canada. Measured within 25 km and 5 km of each populated dissemination area; past fire, not a forecast.
No flood study is listed for Yellowhead
What Canada’s Flood Map Inventory lists for Yellowhead: who studied flooding and where to see their maps.
Nationally, Yellowhead has no listed flood study; the municipality is the place to ask.
Towns with a flood study on file
No study touches Yellowhead; in Manitoba, 18% of towns have one, below Canada’s 58%.
NRCan Canada Flood Map Inventory: a study footprint touching the town’s boundary; towns of 2,500 people or more.
Listed, not scored: a flood study proves a map exists, not that Yellowhead floods.
The inventory’s own caution (NRCan): “The Canada Flood Map (CFM) does not include every flood hazard map in Canada and may be incomplete or contain inaccuracies. It should not be relied upon as the official source of flood mapping information. Furthermore, if a map appears to be missing, this does not necessarily mean that the area has never been mapped. For the official version of a map, updated information, or confirmation of applicable regulations, please contact the local authority responsible for flood mapping.”
Little shaking expected in Yellowhead: $0.006 a year per $1,000
Expected yearly building losses from earthquakes, from Natural Resources Canada’s model.
Shaking costs the typical town $0.030 a year; in Yellowhead it is only $0.006, 0.2 times as much.
Shaking damage a year per $1,000 of building value
The median in Manitoba is $0.006; Yellowhead, at $0.006, is right beside it, and Virden tops the list at $0.007.
NRCan seismic risk model (2022): mean yearly building loss per $1,000 of value; medians of towns of 2,500 people or more.
Most of Canada’s 2,611 towns (88%) face more earthquake damage than Yellowhead.
Each column: the share of Canada’s towns of 2,500 people or more in that range of yearly loss per $1,000 (NRCan, 2022).
What a quake does after the shaking, fire, landslides, tsunami, falls outside NRCan’s figure for Yellowhead.
Natural Resources Canada, Canada’s Seismic Risk Model (2022), by census subdivision (2016 boundaries; a few 2021 subdivisions take their residents’ mean).
35% of homes tested around Yellowhead are over the radon guideline
Long-term radon tests in homes across the survey area, against Health Canada’s guideline. · Radon tests for the Assiniboine health region
Yellowhead’s survey area reads 35% over the guideline, well past the typical Canadian town’s 6.6%.
Tested homes over 200 Bq/m³
Over 600 Bq/m³
More homes top the guideline around Yellowhead (35%) than in the typical town in Manitoba (12%); 1.8% went over 600.
Health Canada radon survey (2009–2011), by 2007 health region; medians of towns of 2,500 people or more.
At least three tests in ten top the guideline around Yellowhead, a level reached by 1.5% of Canada’s towns.
Each bar: the share of Canada’s towns of 2,500 people or more whose survey area had that share of tests over 200 Bq/m³.
Health Canada advises testing every home, Yellowhead’s included, whatever the area’s figure.
Health Canada, Cross-Canada Survey of Radon Concentrations in Homes (2009–2011).
Where to get warnings in Yellowhead
Alerts for Yellowhead come from Environment and Climate Change Canada and, for emergencies, Alert Ready.
| Alert | What it means |
|---|---|
| Warning | Severe weather is happening or about to: act now. |
| Watch | Conditions favour severe weather: be ready. |
| Advisory | Weather that is less severe but could disrupt the day. |
| Special weather statement | Unusual weather worth knowing about. |
| Special air quality statement | Poor air, often wildfire smoke. |
Alert Ready carries evacuation orders for Yellowhead to phones; CWFIS shows the day’s fire danger.
Weather alerts (ECCC) · Alert Ready · Fire danger and active fires (CWFIS)
Get ready for what Yellowhead faces
Practical steps for Yellowhead’s hazards, most pressing first.
- Test for three months in winter.
- Over 200 Bq/m³: fix it.
- Kits are cheap; pros test too.
- Never drive through floodwater.
- Move papers and medicines upstairs.
- Ask whether your street is mapped.
- Clear needles and wood nearby.
- Keep a grab-and-go bag ready.
- In smoke, stay in; filter air.
- Has it had a radon test?
- Ask the municipality for flood maps.
- Are flood and wildfire insured?
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Radon is a survey. About 14,000 homes were tested across Canada in 2009–2011, and the share over the guideline for Yellowhead is its health region’s, the survey’s design unit.
- Earthquakes are modelled. Seismic risk is NRCan’s model of yearly building losses from shaking, averaged over many years and given for Yellowhead’s census subdivision (a neighbourhood shows its city’s).
- Wildfire counts one way. For Yellowhead, wildfire means how much nearby land burned in the past forty years, a one-way input that can pull Risk down and nothing more.
- Flood studies aren’t flood zones. NRCan’s inventory says where flood mapping exists, not where water goes; the map’s owner is the authority for Yellowhead.
Questions about flooding and hazards in Yellowhead
Does Yellowhead flood?
The inventory has 0 studies for Yellowhead, and an empty list isn’t a clean bill: the municipality holds any flood maps.
How big is the earthquake risk in Yellowhead?
NRCan’s model expects shaking to cost buildings in Yellowhead $0.006 a year for every $1,000 of their value, on average over many years.
How is Yellowhead’s Hazard risk Grade worked out?
Hazard risk gives Yellowhead C+, weighing earthquakes and radon and counting wildfire only against it.
Is radon a problem in Yellowhead?
The area’s survey found 35% of 110 tested homes above Health Canada’s guideline, so a three-month test is worth doing in Yellowhead.
Is Yellowhead at risk of wildfire?
Some, but Yellowhead’s low band (0.2% of nearby land burned since 1986, latest 2005) is short of the level that counts.
Seismic risk: Natural Resources Canada. Radon: Health Canada. Wildfire: Canadian Wildland Fire Information System. Flood studies: Natural Resources Canada, Canada Flood Map Inventory. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
Sources: NRCan, Canada’s Seismic Risk Model 2022 · Health Canada, Cross-Canada Survey of Radon Concentrations in Homes · CWFIS, National Burned Area Composite and FBP fuel types · NRCan, Canada Flood Map Inventory. Under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Adapted from Statistics Canada (Census of Population 2021, population estimates 2025, 2021 census boundaries) under the Statistics Canada Open Licence; this does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada. Neighbourhood names in some cities © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).