TORONTO -- Close to 100 Canadians are either on the ground or preparing for travel to Australia to help manage the massive wildfires raging across the country.
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) said this is the first time it's sending Canadians to help manage fires in Australia under an agreement formed in 2016.
“It’s an unprecedented response in the sense that Canada has never sent personnel internationally other than the United States,” CIFFC spokesperson Melanie Morin said in a Skype interview with CTV News Toronto Thursday.
Over the last few years, Australia has sent personnel to B.C. and Alberta four separate times, she said.
So far 95 Canadians are scheduled to make the trip, including 19 from Ontario. 66 are already in New South Wales, an area so hard hit by fires that a week-long state of emergency has been declared.
“It is really a way to reciprocate and help out in our turn. Everyone in emergency services, particularly in fire, when you see someone in need, when you see colleagues, you really want to help and pitch in as best you can.”.
Morin said Canadian teams are set up as close and safely to the fires as possible, working in a trailer or an office.
“Depending on their location there may be smoke or fire on the horizon and there may not be,” Morin said.
“We've had large fire seasons in Canada in the last few years and they [the fires] are very similar to that. Long work days. 10, 12, 14 hour days. You really get to know your colleagues, you really get to have this sense ‘we're all in this together’ and I think that's why they really do this over and over again.”
Among the duties of Canadian personnel: logistics, managing fire fighters and resources and developing strategies to extinguish the fires.
On Jan. 4 a group of 21 Canadians will head out to replace a group that left in December, and on Jan. 6, another group of eight will travel to the region.
CIFFC said no further deployments are planned, but any further requests will be sent to the provinces individually, and they will try to fill those requests to the best of their ability.
