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As parts of California continue to burn in a series of deadly wildfires, Saskatchewan is ready to send aid if needed.
But while the firefighters wait on standby, some may wonder if the province is prepared for its own wildfire season.
Marlo Pritchard, president of the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) and Steve Roberts, the SPSA’s vice president of operations, joined guest host Taylor MacPherson on The Evan Bray Show on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing fires in California and what lessons can be learned.
The pair explained what Saskatchewan is doing now in order to mitigate the risk of wildfires in certain high-risk areas.
Listen to the full interview here:
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
MACPHERSON: What are you guys making of these wildfires in California? And there some lessons that firefighters in Canada can take away from this?
PRITCHARD: We always do an after-action review, even on activities here, and we have agreements with or we have communication with other provinces. We do look at lessons learned from incidents like this.
ROBERTS: What we’re seeing in California, what we saw in Jasper, Fort McMurray, we’re seeing the impacts of wildfires occurring in what’s called the wildland-urban interface, which is forest land and forested areas right adjacent to communities. So there are efforts underway in communities such as those, and even Saskatchewan, where we’re preparing for fires to get into that area. So we’re doing work around communities, removing some of the forest fuels, making emergency plans on how we would fight the fire should they get into that zone, because that’s where they cause the most impact.
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Do we have any forecast for the wildfire season ahead of Saskatchewan this year?
PRITCHARD: No, it’s it’s a little too early for that. We do a risk assessment, and we continue to do it on a weekly basis. And then, of course, as it gets closer to spring we will do a weather forecast and we’ll make decisions based on the risk at that time.
What kind of preparations are underway at the public safety agency ahead of the wildfire season?
ROBERTS: We both have to do our preparedness. So all of our equipment has to be gone over, pumps put back on the shelves, hosed, washed clean, ready to be deployed. Currently we’re recruiting firefighters to be added to our crews for this year to fill any vacancies we had from last year. Our aircraft are all in maintenance, in preparation. So those are some of the short-term things we’re doing.
Currently, projects are undergoing in Saskatchewan right now, during the winter months. Doing that fuel work around some of those communities, ensuring that their risk of wildfires actually getting reduced.
Where are these mitigation efforts happening in Saskatchewan?
ROBERTS: Our efforts are actually around those communities in the forested parts of Saskatchewan, so almost all of our efforts are in areas north of Prince Albert in some of our provincial parks where we have subdivisions, anywhere we have a buildup of community structures in a forested environment. That’s where we’re targeting our mitigation efforts.
What resources are Saskatchewan offering to California if called upon?
Roberts: Our current offer to help California includes bird dog aircraft, so those are our guide aircraft that do the assessments on fires and guide the big tankers into the situations if needed. We have a 10-person crew of initial pack firefighters that we would be willing to send and we also have 2000 blanks of firefighting hose that could also be sent in a short time period.
They were not actually sent to California because they were able to get control of some of those fires, so those resources are available but currently on hold here in Saskatchewan.
Getting resources from Canada would be their second option. Their first option is to bring in the closest resources they have. So they significantly drew on resources from other U.S. states and brought those into California to assist them.
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