New Zealand firefighters gearing up to help battle Canadian blazes

DCE-Piki Thomas and Scott Marchant (left and far right above) help to prepare the Canadian deployment team May 2023 / Click for larger image [JPG, 2.1 MB]

A team of 25 Fire and Emergency personnel have been selected to head to Alberta this week to help fight wildfires that are raging across the Western part of Canada.

We’re sending a contingent of four five-person crews, an agency representative, taskforce leader, two air specialists and an incident commander as part of an Australasian contingent that will support Canada’s firefighting operations. Our team are scheduled to leave Auckland this week.

Deputy National Commander Steph Rotarangi says we’ll specifically be helping with arduous conditions firefighting, incident management requirements, and air operations.

“Our help will be gratefully welcomed as the situation in western Canada is significant. They’ve got large wildfires burning across the area just north of the US-Canada border.”

She says a particular drought through Alberta has lingered since their autumn and fire activity has started early.

“To date there are over 500 fires and nearly 950,000 ha burned in their spring. In Alberta specifically, there are roughly 90 blazes which has resulted in 10,000 people being evacuated from their homes. It’s even affected the oil and gas production in Canada because of shifting fire conditions.”

Steph says fighting fires of this magnitude is a hugely demanding task, but we’re happy to provide support to our Canadian colleagues.

"It’s extremely tough firefighting conditions in Canada just now with unseasonably hot, tinder-dry weather and shifting wind elevating the risk of wildfires spreading in an area already under pressure."

Steph says sending our people overseas is extremely valuable as a development opportunity.

"It gives our people experience in different environments that they can bring back here and apply to New Zealand wildfires," Steph Rotarangi says.

This is not the first time our people have been deployed overseas to help. We’ve previously been deployed to Australia, Canada, the US, Japan, Turkey and several Pacific Island countries to help with wildfires, flooding and natural disasters.

International deployments are an important part of what we do, supporting our partner countries in their time of need, as they would help us if we ever needed it. However, this doesn’t come at the expense of ensuring we have enough domestic resources for what we need here at home.