SHARING RESOURCES
Firefighters co-operating internationally.
Saskatchewan has this month signed two new reciprocal international firefighting agreements, with Mexico and South Africa.
They join a deal inked in the spring with Northern U.S. states, called the Great Plains Interstate Forest Fire Compact. It includes the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska.
Saskatchewan’s executive director of wildfire management, Steve Roberts, said the agreements are costneutral, so if other countries use Saskatchewan resources, they pay us. “To be able to call on them when you need that capacity is a huge benefit,” Roberts said.
Roberts said it takes a long time to get such agreements in place; he has been working on the Mexico deal since 2007, and he said there ’ s a deal with Austra-lia in the works.
Standing in front of two of the province’s firefighting aircraft — a Convair 580A and a Turbo Commander bird dog — Roberts said Saskatchewan’s historically bad wildfires are now all but snuffed, with only 10 still burning in the north.
Focus now turns to the possibility of fall and hunting fires.
“The fire season is on the downslide — we’re getting colder overnight temperatures, we’ve had precipitation, so again we’re wrapping things up for the season in most cases,” Roberts said.
Regarding the new agreements, Environment Minister Herb Cox said “the more hands on the ground, and the more equipment you have to fight these fires, the better off we all are — whatever jurisdiction we’re in.”
Cox said the province is still “absolutely” pushing for a national wildfire equipment cache.
From Roberts’ perspective, more resources are a good thing.
“At the end of the day, if you can get more resources available internally, you can get online sooner,” he said.