Only two months after telling the Gloucester Advocate he had never been deployed overseas, local ranger Sean Thompson was among the final contingent of three NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) fire experts to return home from fighting fires in remote Canada recently.
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Assisting with the Canadian wildfire emergency, Gloucester-based Sean provided planning support for the Larne Complex, which covers 20,000 hectares around the Meander River in Alberta.
“There were three large fire complexes, and our job was to protect the Meander community,” he said on his return.
Sean’s work covered planning how to fight the fire three to five days ahead. When he arrived the local fire fighters, made up primarily of First Nation people and seasonally employed crews, had exhausted all of their available reserves and so welcomed the crew of 24 Australians and 60 or so charismatic Mexicans who arrived to lend a hand.
“There was a lot of cross-fertilisation of ideas... Different places do different things,” he said.
The first thing Sean had to get used to was the different nature of the environment, the ‘fuel’ and the access to locations. Most of the crews were deployed on a daily basis by helicopter due to the combination of swamp and forest terrain and a complete lack of road fire breaks.
“Some of the humus in the peat swamps was two feet deep... Fires can smoulder underground for days. I had to get my head around that as well as the different fuel types. The conifers are so dense and their vegetation goes all the way up the trunk, they burn differently and have extreme fire activity,” he said.
Sean spent up to 14 days working without a break, with extended daylight hours seeing long shifts needing to be covered. Briefed to expect moose, coyotes, and bears, he slept in a tent under the edge of the forest canopy, enjoying the comradeship between nationalities all united for one cause – beating the fires.
Thanking the team on their return, National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) deputy chief executive Michael Wright thanked the deployment for their enormous efforts as part of the 104-strong Australian crew sent to various parts of Canada in July.
“Our experts worked side-by-side to support Canadian authorities and their international counterparts from Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States, to address this unprecedented fire emergency,” Mr Wright said.
“Naturally in such an intense situation a great camaraderie developed between the Australian and international teams, contributing to the success of the operation. Our team certainly did us all proud; they have been fantastic representatives of NPWS and Australia in general. We are very lucky to have such dedicated and talented fire experts, who were willing to travel such a long way to help their Canadian counterparts.”
Over 3.92 million hectares have been burnt across more than 6000 wildfires during the 2015 Canadian fire season, more than double the figures from 2014.
British Columbia’s relationship with Australia in sharing firefighting resources has been in place for over 15 years. This agreement allows for the exchange of personnel, knowledge, skills, equipment, technology and mutual support in the event of an emergency.
By the time Gloucester’s Sean Thompson left, the Larne Complex fires had been downgraded in status enough to hand back to the locals.