{"id":496331,"date":"2022-09-27T04:33:03","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T01:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/what-its-really-like-to-fight-b-c-s-wildfires\/"},"modified":"2022-09-27T04:33:03","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T01:33:03","slug":"what-its-really-like-to-fight-b-c-s-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/what-its-really-like-to-fight-b-c-s-wildfires\/","title":{"rendered":"#What it\u2019s really like to fight B.C.\u2019s wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a288ab44035f\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a288ab44035f\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/what-its-really-like-to-fight-b-c-s-wildfires\/#%E2%80%9CWhat_its_really_like_to_fight_BCs_wildfires%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;What it\u2019s really like to fight B.C.\u2019s wildfires&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWhat_its_really_like_to_fight_BCs_wildfires%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;What it\u2019s really like to fight B.C.\u2019s wildfires&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                                                                        <em>Scott Rennick has been fighting fires in British Columbia for 30 years\u2014first as an emergency firefighter, now as an incident commander overseeing some of the most complex and dangerous wildfires in the province. In his career, he\u2019s seen how climate change is causing more frequent and more devastating fire seasons\u2014and he\u2019s concerned about the future.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m from Vernon originally. I come from a family that worked in mills and logging\u2014I grew up in the forestry sector. One hot August in the early \u201990s, when I was a teenager on a break from school, I was watching the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a> and saw a clip of professional firefighting crews for the first time. I think it was the first year they had this uniform called the reds and blues, which is what we still wear: red shirt, blue cargo pants. I thought, <em>Wow, I want to do that.<\/em> I put my name in for what was called the emergency firefighter program, and I got a call telling me to show up. I had no training, and I didn\u2019t really have any gear\u2014I bought my first pair of boots, which were not waterproof. They gave me a hard hat and off we went to a camp east of Vernon, in the community of Cherryville. Then I was in a fire camp, just a kid out of high school with 50 other firefighters.<\/p>\n<p>When I was in university, I <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>lied to the BC Wildfire Service. I actually applied four times\u2014in between I was fighting fires in the summertime, and doing silviculture work to pay for university. Finally, I got a job posting in Campbell River, on an initial attack crew. I worked my way up, and eventually I ended up in Lytton. I\u2019ve been here for 13 years.<\/p>\n<p>There are two primary types of crews. The first are called initial attack crews, and they consist of three people. They are the first responders. They go out by truck or a helicopter to deal with a fire in its first few hours. The second type are called unit crews. Once the fire is beyond initial attack, they come in. They work on large fires, or what I call campaign fires\u2014fires that last a long time.<\/p>\n<p>Our initial attack success rate this year was quite high, because we had a cooler spring and later summer, and the lightning that came through was at a higher elevation. It was good for us to win this year, because last year we lost a lot of battles. We lost most of Lytton last year, and most of my staff lost their homes. You\u2019re just not the same after you go through that\u2014after you watch your home burn, and your friends\u2019 homes, your family\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n<p>As an incident commander, I go out to deal with the most complex and biggest fires in our area. There are 16 people on my team, and we\u2019ve been together for four years now. We get called in when there\u2019s a particularly challenging fire, or if there\u2019s a cluster of fires. That\u2019s why we were sent to Chetwynd this year on September 2: not just because of the fire at Battleship Mountain, but because there were six fires burning in the area within the first 24 hours. Some were small, some were a few hundred hectares, and then there was the fire at Bearhole Lake. When we got there, it hadn\u2019t really rained in five weeks or so.<\/p>\n<p>When we arrive at a site, we bring multiple crews and resources. We build these camps that are like small cities. Some have 300 or 400 people; the average is around 200 or 250. For these fires, though, we had to split up the team because of the distance between the fires\u2014 Bearhole Lake to Battleship Mountain is about 170 kilometres by helicopter. We had about 150 people in Chetwynd, another 80 in Hudson Hope and then a camp in Dawson Creek with over 100 people.<\/p>\n<p>At first, we had to focus most of our resources on Bearhole, because the fire was breaching toward the highway and coming straight toward the community of Kelly Lake. We did an ignition operation, which is where we use applied fire to bring the wildfire to us. It\u2019s an indirect attack, where you\u2019re working parallel to the fire and bringing it toward you. There is risk in it, but it\u2019s carefully choreographed. We were able to contain the head of the fire and then turn it over to another team. Then we could focus on Battleship Mountain.<\/p>\n<p>The situation on Battleship was challenging initially because we only had one point of access, and the fire was encroaching on it. It\u2019s very dangerous for our staff to be in those conditions because they can be quickly overrun by the fire. The helicopters were dropping buckets of water. The public always says, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you use more of that?\u201d But aviation crews don\u2019t put the fire out. They can buy us time, but it\u2019s the ground crews who actually put out the fires. Or Mother Nature, if it rains.<\/p>\n<p>On Saturday, September 10, the fire began moving toward Hudson Hope and the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. It probably advanced 10 kilometres in a single afternoon, which is really fast. We issued an evacuation recommendation that evening. The morning of the evacuation, I looked at the weather forecast and I knew we were entering a very dangerous phase. When a fire gets to that level, people need to understand they\u2019re natural disasters, with the power of a tornado or a tsunami. At that point, there is just simply nothing we can do. The fire is coming like a freight train.<\/p>\n<p>Recommending an evacuation is not an easy thing to do. I\u2019m from a community that\u2019s been devastated by wildfire, so I know how hard it is on people. In recent years, we\u2019ve been seeing an increase in people who don\u2019t want to leave\u2014maybe they have livestock, or they don\u2019t think the fire is really going to be there until it\u2019s right on their doorstep. It\u2019s an alarming trend. In Lytton, the town was overrun in less than half an hour. There was no real evacuation order because the local government had already collapsed and people were running for their lives. Once in a while I will play the Lytton card, but only in really serious situations, if people are reluctant to leave. It\u2019s frustrating, because when people put themselves in harm\u2019s way, they\u2019re also putting my people in harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p>But the next day, the winds weren\u2019t as strong as expected, and we saw an opportunity. We did an ignition operation, burning 31 kilometres along the east flank of the fire that was threatening Hudson Hope. That allowed us to build a buffer and stem the advance of the fire toward the town. Then the rains came, which was great. Sometimes you get lucky with the weather. Other times, like in 2017 and 2021, we didn\u2019t get lucky. It\u2019s a humbling thing, working a fire like this, because you really understand the power of nature.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone doesn\u2019t believe in climate change, come and talk to me. It\u2019s just different now. We\u2019ll see years like this one, where it\u2019s more of an average season. But the severity of the big seasons is changing, and they\u2019re coming closer and closer together. It used to be every four to six years, now we\u2019re seeing them every two to three.<\/p>\n<p>After years like 2017, \u201918 and \u201921, my staff are exhausted. I\u2019m exhausted. We spend 60 to 80 days on the road, working 14- to 16-hour days\u2014sometimes a lot longer than that. My crew has done up to 120 days. We get to the end of these seasons and we\u2019re tired, we need to rest so we\u2019re ready for the next one.\u00a0 I love being on the road with my team\u2014they\u2019re like my family, I love them. At the same time, there\u2019s burnout that comes with this work, and when we\u2019re dealing with these extraordinary fires, we really need a bit of a pause. And we don\u2019t get that as much anymore.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re evolving as quickly as we can to meet the new challenges. But we\u2019re going to have to make some tough choices about how we build our houses and how we manage our properties. We\u2019ll have to change how we manage fire in the landscape, and use culturally prescribed fire. We have to understand that we\u2019re coming into a very different environment than anything we\u2019ve seen before. My dad fought fire in the \u201980s, my grandfather before him. And this is not like anything they saw when they were out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014As told to Michelle Cyca<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/society\/what-its-really-like-to-fight-b-c-s-wildfires\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What it\u2019s really like to fight B.C.\u2019s wildfires&#8221; Scott Rennick has been fighting fires in British Columbia for 30 years\u2014first as an emergency firefighter, now as an incident commander overseeing some of the most complex and dangerous wildfires in the province. In his career, he\u2019s seen how climate change is causing more frequent and more&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5039,133631,70641,22974],"class_list":["post-496331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-att","tag-b-c-wildfires","tag-bc-wildfires","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}