A single engine amphibious air tanker made a forced landing Tuesday while working on a wildfire in British Columbia.
“This evening a Conair 802 Air Tractor Fireboss Skimmer aircraft experienced an engine failure during operations on the Connell Ridge Wildfire, near Cranbrook,” said BC Wildfire Service Executive Director Ian Meier. “The pilot conducted a successful forced landing and was transported to receive medical assessment. Our thoughts are with the pilot involved in this incident as well as their family, friends and colleagues. The BC Wildfire Service is providing all possible assistance to the pilot and Conair.”
Jeff Berry, Director of Business Development with Conair Aerial Firefighting confirmed the pilot was able to walk away unharmed from the aircraft to a helicopter and was transported to Cranbrook for assessment by paramedics.
“His skill and training as an aerial firefighting pilot under challenging circumstances enabled him to execute an exceptional emergency maneuver resulting in a safe outcome,” said Berry. “He was faced with a problem with the engine, he went through his emergency procedures, and put the aircraft down in such a way that he was able to walk away unharmed. Faced with a difficult bunch of decisions in a very, very short period, he did exceptionally well.”
The Connell Ridge Fire 14 miles south Cranbrook, BC has burned approximately 1,235 acres (500 hectares) since it was discovered August 1, 2022.
File photo of an Air Tractor 802 Fire Boss operated by Conair. Not necessarily the aircraft involved in the incident.
Nohomin Creek Fire, looking north up the Fraser River towards the Stein Valley. BC Fire Service photo, 3:39 p.m. MDT July 16, 2022.
The British Columbia Fire Service reported at 4:02 p.m. Saturday that the fire activity on the Nohomin Creek Fire northwest of Lytton, BC has been stable today and no major growth was observed. Ground crews and aviation resources are working on the south, east, and north flanks. The western flank is moving upslope in steep, difficult to access terrain, the agency said.
The Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Park is partially closed. Currently, there are no impacts to Highway 1 or Highway 12. The Lytton Ferry is closed in both directions.
There was no update on the size, and it is still reported at 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres).
10:32 a.m. MDT July 16, 2022
Nohomin Creek Fire Lytton, BC, July 14, 2022. BC Wildfire Service.
The Nohomin Creek Fire on the west side of the Fraser River northwest of Lytton, British Columbia has burned approximately 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) since it was reported Thursday July 14. Judging from these photos shot that day it spread very rapidly.
Fire officials said Friday that at least six homes have been destroyed, and that number could rise.
The BC Wildfire Service reports that the fire behavior is rank four and rank five, meaning it is crowning, has a moderate to fast rate of spread, and is exhibiting short-range spotting.
Nohomin Creek Fire map. The red dots represent heat detected by satellites as late as 7 a.m. MDT July 16, 2022.
Winds of 30 to 40 kilometers per hour (19 to 26 miles per hour) are pushing the fire west away from communities, according to the BC Wildfire Service in a Friday evening update. At that time there were no impacts to Highway 1 or Highway 12. The Lytton Ferry is closed in both directions.
The two photos below were taken the day the fire started.
(1) Nohomin Creek Fire across the river from Lytton, BC, July 14, 2022.(2) Nohomin Creek Fire across the river from Lytton, BC, at 3 p.m. July 14, 2022.
In late June of 2021 the Lytton Creek Fire burned more than 83,700 hectares (206,000 acres) and destroyed 90 percent of the village of Lytton. Two civilians were killed in the fire.
The agency employs approximately 1,000 wildland firefighters
Minister of Finance Selina Robinson presented the 2022 budget for British Columbia on February 22, 2022.
The government of British Columbia intends to move to a year-round workforce for the Wildfire Service in the next fiscal year that begins April 1. In a February 22 presentation Minister of Finance Selina Robinson said, “$145 million in new funding will strengthen B.C.’s emergency management and wildfire services. The BC Wildfire Service will shift from a reactive to a proactive approach by moving to a year-round workforce that will deliver all pillars of emergency management: prevention and mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.”
The BC Wildfire Service employs approximately 1,000 wildland firefighters each year.
The new budget will allow improvements of the public alerting system for wildfires and help support people and communities during climate-related events.
An additional $98 million will fund wildfire prevention work and maintain forest service roads used to respond to forest fires.
The budget also includes $210 million to support community climate change preparedness and emergency management, including through the FireSmart program, the Community Emergency Preparedness Fund, and Indigenous-led emergency management priorities. It will support communities and First Nations to build more resilient dikes and map floodplains.
Equipment more sensitive than a conventional spirometer was able to detect lung damage
A police officer walks past burned homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada May 5, 2016. AFP photo / Alberta RCMP / HO
A study on the health of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers who were deployed in Alberta, Canada in 2016 to the Horse River Fire at Fort McMurray found that their airway function was compromised in the first three months after deployment. An analysis of health data from 218 officers revealed that the small airways in their lungs underwent structural changes after they were deployed, potentially increasing their risk for respiratory diseases in the future. The median exposure duration of the officers was eight days.
“We cannot tell from our study whether it’s long-lasting damage, but we do know from other studies that if people are exposed to high levels of particulate matter in the air, they are more likely to suffer from long-lasting damage to the lungs,” said Paige Lacy, professor of medicine at the University of Alberta and former director of research for the Alberta Respiratory Centre.
The Horse River Fire caused the largest evacuation in Canadian history, with more than 80,000 people rapidly removed from the community as fires encroached on the city. Hundreds of RCMP members were sent to the community to assist with the evacuation and to secure the area in the following days. The fire burned 589,552 hectares (1.4 million acres) in 2016 and destroyed 2,400 structures. The extreme fire behavior created lightning in the pyrocumulonimbus cloud atop the smoke column that started a number of new wildfires 40 kilometers (26 miles) ahead of the main wildfire front according to a report released in June of 2017.
These two fires started at about the same time on May 1, 2016 near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. On the left is the MMD-004 fire inside the city limits of Fort McMurray. The Horse River Fire, often referred to as the Fort McMurray Fire, is on the right.
Subtle changes in lung function detected
The lung-function data were gathered as part of a larger study being conducted by Synergy Respiratory and Cardiac Care, looking at the health of RCMP officers dispatched to the Fort McMurray wildfire. According to the researchers, the subtle differences in lung function that were found were not measurable using traditional lung-function tests, and could only be observed through the use of more sensitive instruments. Researchers employed both spirometry and body plethysmography testing methods.
“Small airways are potentially more vulnerable and there is no way that a spirometer (a device commonly used to measure lung function) can detect the progression of their damage over time,” said Subhabrata Moitra, first author on the study and a post-doctoral fellow in the U of A’s Division of Pulmonary Medicine. “So if we use highly sensitive instruments, we can immediately get some signals whether there are any acute yet subtle changes caused by physiological factors or occupational or environmental hazards.”
The researchers noted that because the officers only came in for testing once after being deployed, they were not able to observe potential recovery of lung function or measure long-term damage.
The authors of the study pointed out the importance of having a health-surveillance program in place so responders who are exposed to such hazards can have their health monitored.
Survey finds that firefighters also complained of respiratory issues
A survey found that some firefighters who fought the fire at Fort McMurray also battled respiratory and mental health issues.
The University of Alberta study surveyed 355 firefighters and found a “very large proportion” of them complained of respiratory issues including coughing, breathlessness, wheezing and chest tightness in the immediate aftermath of the fire.
“When we saw them later, probably about one in five of those still had problems with their chests that they felt had been caused or made worse by the fire,” said Nicola Cherry, the epidemiologist leading the study.
And they’re battling more than just physical ailments — mental-health issues affect one in six of study participants.
“When we collected this information, it was early days and people may develop bigger issues as time goes forward,” Cherry said.
Our Take
It is likely that wildland firefighters are routinely exposed to far higher concentrations of smoke and for longer periods of time than the RCMP officers at Fort McMurray. It is important that agencies who employ wildland firefighters establish a health-surveillance program that includes lung function tests using methods such as body plethysmography that are much more sensitive than a conventional spirometer.
Warmer, drier conditions that lead to more frequent fires in Canada’s vast boreal forests are threatening the dominance of black spruce trees that for thousands of years thrived in a healthy relationship with forest fires.
Black spruce trees and the thick layer of peat they take root in are great fuel for the fires. So typically, every 100 years or so, a fire would sweep through and take out a stand of these iconic boreal trees.
That same fire would warm up the black spruces’ waxy cones, releasing its seeds that would allow the black spruce forest to regenerate.
But in recent years, climate change has undermined the healthy relationship between black spruce trees and forest fires. More frequent wildfires are pushing large areas of black spruce forests past their recovery point.
As a result they’re being replaced by other species, and sometimes the forest doesn’t regenerate at all.
“We do see evidence of shifts away from black spruce dominance in more than one third of the sites,” said Jennifer Baltzer, the Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change at Wilfrid Laurier University.
This shift away from black spruce dominated-forests could have far reaching implications for the wildlife that depend on them — like caribou — and for the massive amount of carbon these forests store underground.
Baltzer is the lead author of a new study that analyzed more than 1,500 former burn sites across the North American boreal forest, between 1989 and 2014.
“This is one study, in a growing body of evidence, that we’re pushing ecosystems toward these tipping points that we don’t really know what comes next,” Baltzer told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald.
Funded by Natural Resources Canada, a project provided preliminary data on cultural safety and occupational health and safety that is necessary to improve the understanding of Indigenous perspectives on wildland firefighting and wildland fire operations across what is now called Canada.
Wildland firefighting is a unique occupation. For decades, Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) firefighters and fire operations staff have been engaged in wildland fire suppression activities, formally and informally. They are increasingly being called upon by their communities and the broader wildfire management agency community in Canada to engage and deploy in various wildfire suppression and related duties. In the past decade, we have seen an increase in wildfire activity and the number of communities put at risk or impacted by high-intensity wildfire events. Due to the nature of this work, Indigenous Peoples engaged in wildland fire suppression activities routinely work in hazardous situations and stressful environments – impacting their physical, mental, and spiritual/cultural well-being.
Giving Voice to Cultural Safety of Indigenous Wildland Firefighters in Canada was a multidisciplinary, collaborative team-based project.
From January – July 2021, the Turtle Island Consulting Services Inc. (TICS Inc.) Project Team explored the following set of questions:
What are Indigenous wildland firefighters’ and wildland fire operations staff’s experiences regarding accident/injury rates, sickness presenteeism/absenteeism, chronic illness, close calls, racism/ discrimination/harassment?
What is currently working on the fireline and fire operation centres to promote cultural safety of Indigenous wildland firefighting personnel?
What are the priority needs/issues and recommendations for enhancing cultural safety for Indigenous wildland firefighting personnel?
The TICS Inc. Project Team developed an online survey and virtual circles were conducted specifically for individuals who self-identified as Indigenous and worked in wildland firefighting and/or fire operations for at least one fire season in Canada. These participant selection criteria supported the sharing of Indigenous Peoples’ voices in culturally safe spaces to help (i) increase the understanding of their jobs, (ii) enhance overall satisfaction from a cross-cultural perspective during this important work, and (iii) aid in making the future of wildland firefighting more enjoyable, safer, and culturally inviting.
For more information about Project findings, please view the following reports.
The Executive Summary is immediately below. Farther down you can click to download it or view it online .
