I think you have that backwards. The way to prevent large forest fires is to regularly have small (preferably controlled) forest fires. Otherwise, forests accumulate undergrowth which makes the inevitable fire even bigger.
That's what I was thinking in seeing all of these photos/videos. What kind of controlled burn strategies does Alberta province have in place? I know that before these kind of policies were implemented in the Pacific northwest of the United States you would semi-periodically have disastrous wildfires, which are now largely mitigated by way of controlled burns to limit the extent and intensity of fires. I would like to think that similar strategies have been implemented in Alberta/BC but don't actually know the facts. Anyone want to chime in?