More than 20 fire rangers lined up to enjoy a barbecue to celebrate a summer that was no picnic for the crews based in North Bay.
OneLife Wealth Management held an “Unsung Heroes” barbecue on Wednesday afternoon to thank the crews for all the work they did in the north this past summer.
James Zacher is a fire management supervisor at the North Bay fire management headquarters.
He cannot recall a busy forest fire season in the Northeast like this summer.
“Unprecedented would be a good word to for the amount of fires that started so quickly over the week or two after the Canada Day weekend but as well the size of the fires, that was the really challenging one, they grew quite large, quite quickly so we had a lot of fires on the landscape and significant size so very challenging for the number of resources we have in the province,” he said.
Zacher spent a lot of time overseeing operations in the air during the peak moments of the season, especially with North Bay 72 near Temagami which led to evacuations and grew to more than 28,000 hectares in size.
See related: Forest fires lead to evacuations near Temagami
“The most trying times were when those fires were getting close to the communities and having to evacuate such a large number of people all within a couple of days,” he said.
Zacher did point out that teamwork was a key between the municipal fire departments, the OPP, and the air and ground MNRF crews.
While Zacher watched from the air North Bay native Konor Poulin spent his summer on the ground. Poulin has been a fire ranger for more than five years.
“The big one for me was the beginning of July the base cleared out faster than anyone had ever seen,” noted Poulin about the busy forest fire season in the Northeast.
“We were popping fires faster than anyone had ever seen and a lot of the fire behaviour that not many of us had seen before so it was a big eye-opener and just a great experience.”
Poulin believes that fire behaviour was caused due to the extreme heat and lack of rain in the region this summer.
“So this year the lack of rain and dry conditions allowed the fires go down into the ground a lot deeper and spread a lot faster,” he noted.
The MNRF crews were thrilled to get recognized through a barbeque and they admit the busy forest fire season has brought attention to their occupation.
“A lot of folks in the area weren’t aware of fire rangers presence based in North Bay and after this season that level of awareness has significantly increased,” said Zacher.
And these crews hope that the challenging forest fire season brings more awareness and safety messages as those in the Northeast realize now what can happen.
