After a two-week break, another group of Burnaby firefighters has dropped everything this week and headed to the B.C. Interior to help fight forest fires.
Burnaby crews were sent home by the Office of the Fire Commissioner about two weeks ago, after five deployments of 10 firefighters each to Cache Creek, Clinton and Loon Lake, where they helped protect buildings from wildfires.
A couple days ago, however, hot dry weather breathed new life into the Elephant Hill wildfire east of Highway 1 between 70 Mile House and 100 Mile House, according to deputy fire Chief Dave Samson, and the Office of the Fire Commissioner and B.C. Wildfire Service specifically asked for the Burnaby Fire Department to send a crew to take charge of their night operations there.
“We’ve done a good job,” Samson said. “That’s been our role since our initial deployment, so the word is that they feel comfortable knowing that we’re not only on the ground but we’ve had one of our chief officers in command of night operations the entire time.”
In the Interior, Burnaby firefighters have protected structures, helped stop wildfires from crossing highways and protected wildland firefighters.
“Sadly we’ve seen structures that have been burnt, but we’ve been successful in protecting all the structures in our deployments so far,” Samson said. “There’s certainly been lots of fire activity. …The fire’s certainly been close to our crews almost the entire time.”
Burnaby’s sixth deployment – 10 local firefighters who got the call Wednesday night – headed out Thursday morning.
“We have just awesome people,” Samson said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for our people that are willing to drop everything over the summertime and the Labour Day weekend and leave their lives to go up and help out in a provincial state of emergency.”
