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Almost 100 Canadians are hard at work in Australia helping to fight fires in New South Wales.
As of Monday, 95 Canadian fire experts had made the trip overseas. That included 11 from Saskatchewan, which sent three over the weekend in a third wave.
Melanie Morin, the information officer for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, gave more details about their roles in battling the blazes to Gormley.
“We have operations officers and chiefs that are out there deciding tactics and strategy. We’ve got logistics, fire behaviour analysis, plans (and) aviation,” she explained.
No Canadians are working as front-line firefighters to extinguish the fire directly.
The workers stay on deployment in Australia for a period between 30 and 38 days before returning home. The first batch of experts is to come back to Canada on Thursday.
Morin also explained why they’ve been given the assignment of travelling to fight fires.
“We have agreements with Australia. We also have agreements with New Zealand, South Africa, Mexico and the U.S.,” she said.
Those agreements also let Canada request the help of foreign fire experts.
“Australia has come to Canada four times prior,” Morin said. “Now, it’s the first time that we’ve been able to reciprocate.”
