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Forest Fire Supression Course
A Mutual Aid Success Story!
Prince Edward Island has had an average of over 40 forest fire responses per year since the late 1970s. Few of these fires capture media attention but each results in the activation of one or more of the forest fire suppression teams in the three Districts. The largest fire in recent history was the Portage forest fire of 1960 when over 17,900 acres burned. The average fire size in the last decade has been reduced to 6.4 acres through better initial attack and reporting as well as media assistance in conveying fire danger information and public respect for the necessary precautions.
Mutual aid is the underlying strength which supports Prince Edward Island's forest fire suppression system. Volunteer Fire Departments in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and Forestry's Forestry and Land Resource Modeling Divison staff and equipment form the core of the forest fire mutual aid suppression team approach. The Department of Agriculture and Forestry maintains a fleet of six forest fire tanker/pumpers and two all terrain tracked tankers. Four of the five 4 X 4 tankers are placed under contract with volunteer fire departments at Souris, Georgetown, Wellington, and West Point. Each of these fire departments is responsible for responding to forest fires in a much larger area than their structural fire control district. This places additional stress on their firefighters as it means that members of these fire departments spend more time responding to and fighting fires. Their commitment to their communities also means that these Departments can use these specialized off road fire vehicles to assist with other fire suppression activities in their community when the equipment is not required for forest fire control.
Mutual aid is also the core of the forest fire reporting system. Anyone seeing a forest fire in the province is responsible for promptly reporting the fire. Early reporting is essential to the control of forest fires as the total perimeter of active fire increases as time passes. If the fire has dry fuels, the fire grows larger and its heat intensity builds. When conditions are right for high intensity fire, this can lead to crown fire, a rapidly spreading, extreme fire event with fire running through the tops of conifer trees. These types of fire generate megawatts of heat output for each metre of the advancing fire edge and, because of the high winds created by the intense fire, they are capable of dropping burning embers hundreds of yards ahead of the advancing fire. Thus, in extreme fire, many volunteer fire departments can be involved either protecting structures from these cinders which start spot fires ahead of the main fire or working on the various faces of the fire. In 1986, when three crown fires occurred on the same day and a fourth started several days later, 17 volunteer fire departments with 28 fire trucks joined with Department staff and equipment on the fire lines along with 30 bulldozers and 89 other volunteers to bring these fires under control.
Prior to May of 2000, a toll free forest fire number was used to sound the alarm through a contracted paging service. This is now activated through the 911 system which advises the paging service. When a forest fire is reported, the paging service pages the staff of the appropriate District or Section and these individuals respond to their radios to arrange for dispatch of the closest person to assess the fire while the balance respond fire fighting equipment, personnel, and maps to the fire scene. Within seconds of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry pages, the fire department with the forest fire tanker for that area is dispatched again using pagers. These fire brigades respond at least three fire fighters and the truck to the fire. If the fire is bad, other fire departments may be brought in under mutual aid.
Forest fire fighting under low fire weather index conditions is usually relatively easy to handle although quite time consuming. However, as fire conditions climb to moderate, high, or extreme, violent fire behaviour and danger increases dramatically. Volunteer fire departments are assigned a variety of roles in forest fire fighting and the Department of Agriculture and Forestry offers their firefighters a Basic Forest Fire Suppression Course to augment their skills in the control of forest fires. This course benefits all parties in the mutual aid system as the course increases a firefighters abilities to fight the fire both safely and effectively. In addition, each firefighter on each team is responsible for conveying changes in fire behaviour that might affect the safety or allocation of resources to other team members on large fires.
In addition to the volunteer fire departments, extreme fire behaviour can force activation of the Emergency Measures Organization or our interprovincial forest fire mutual aid system.(Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre). Rapidly spreading forest fires can lead to evacuations of large areas and EMO is particularly useful when this sort of event compounds the variety of problems arising from extreme fire behaviour. The Department of Agriculture and Forestry is also a signatory to the agreement which provides mutual aid between forest fire fighting agencies in both Canada and the United States. This agreement was utilized in 1995 at the Milltown Cross fire when two helicopters with lift buckets assisted in bringing this crown fire under control.
