During the second week of July, British Columbia declared a state of emergency as a result of a high number of forest fires within its provincial borders. Ontario provided both equipment and human resources to help our western neighbours.
A warm, dry weather system combined with frequent lightning events triggered several new starts in Ontario’s northwest in late July and throughout August. This forced a scale back of deployment of staff to other provinces and to dedicate resources here at home at the time.
In late August, when the forest fire situation eased, the provincial resource deployments increased to help British Columbia.
In total, 1,040 AFFES staff members were deployed out of province, some of these individuals went out of province more than once.
Of these, 997 people went to British Columbia, eight were sent out of province to assist the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, 21 were deployed to Manitoba and 14 people travelled to Alberta to assist Parks Canada.
Ontario deployed 4 CL415 waterbombers, two bird dog aircrafts as well as pilots and air attack officers to assist Montana in the United States. And two CL415 tankers and a birddog were also sent to assist Manitoba.
Firefighting equipment was also sent out of province to assist firefighting agencies in British Columbia and Manitoba. In total this season: 10,000 lengths of hose, 203 pumps and two mobile values protection trailers were sent to British Columbia; and 100 Sprinkler Kits were sent to Manitoba.
Prescribed Burning
AFFES promotes the use of fire through prescribed burning by coordinating planning and burning activities to ensure that all burns are conducted safely and effectively. This includes approving prescribed burn plans on Crown lands and conducting burns.
Out of Province Deployments/Imports