14-07-2025
Five firefighters to help in Canada
Five Otago firefighters will spend the five weeks battling wildfires in a region of Canada, which has just declared its second state of emergency this year.
Glenorchy volunteer firefighters Sonya Porteous and Dale Jefcoate and their Dunstan counterparts Tony Smith (crew leader) and Ewan Richmond, and Wakari rural fire brigade member Chris McLeod, a commercial arborist, are part of a 43-strong Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) taskforce assisting in Manitoba.
The taskforce includes an agency representative, two taskforce leaders and eight five-person "arduous firefighting crews", of which Otago's is one.
Additionally, Fenz sent a seven-person incident management team to the region last week. Other countries to send firefighters to date include Australia, South Africa and the United States.
All crews would be there for about five weeks, working in 16-hour shifts for 14 days, with 10-hour standdowns between shifts, taking a few days off, and then doing it all again.
Fenz said as of Friday morning there were 518 wildfires raging across multiple Canadian provinces — 145 of those were considered out of control and of those 105 were in Manitoba.
On Saturday morning, New Zealand time, the New York Times reported the wildfires in Manitoba were on pace to scorch the most land there in 31 years — so far this year, over 1 million hectares has burnt, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.
"The firefighters are considered arduous firefighters," Fenz said in a statement.
"It is tough, physical work.
"Previous Canadian deployments have seen arduous firefighters using hand tools to dig out hotspots, cut fallen branches, clear access tracks and escape routes, mop up, and all the other jobs associated with fighting large-scale fires."
Fenz Otago group manager Bobby Lamont, of Queenstown, said Otago had sent "the five best out of our region", all of whom were crew leaders in their respective brigades.
Mr Lamont expected the terrain to be hilly, swampy and arduous and while they would have some air support, most of the work would be done on the ground.
Mr Smith, who had been a firefighter for 27 years, was on his second deployment to Canada and had also been to Australia twice previously, expected much of the work would be focused on controlling the fires.
They would push fires "away from builtup areas where there are people — it'll keep burning ... until it snows", Mr Smith said.
While there was a level of danger associated with any fire, they would do their best to stay out of harm's way.
"We all want to come home in one piece."
He also noted the experience equated to about five years' training in New Zealand.
Mr Lamont said there were limited opportunities for long-duration incidents, so the experience was "absolutely invaluable — not only for the firefighters, but for our incident management teams".
"Getting over there, immersed into 28 days of active firefighting and management, it's the gold standard."
