Due to the extreme fire situation the province finds itself in, it has many people wondering why untrained people are not being told to go on the fire lines. I am a trained and certified forest firefighter and fought fires from 1985-1996, so I do understand and know what I am talking about.
Putting untrained people on the fire line is very dangerous and a hazard to anyone around them. I should know as when I fought, I usually was the only trained person on the crew aside from the crew boss. The rest were off the street, as that was common practice at the time.
The problem with that is you have a crew of untrained people that didn't have proper clothing or footwear and then you give them a shovel, pulaski tool or a hose can and tell them to make a fire line. In most cases they had no clue what that meant, and you had to spend time showing them how to dig a trench and how to spray water (its not as easy as it sounds).
On top of that, untrained people don't know how to check for hotspots or how to properly mop up or look for signs of flareups or what to do when the forest catches fire around you. Injuries amongst untrained crews were extremely high and some of those injuries were life changing but even then, firefighter deaths were rare.
Around the time I was nearing the end of my firefighting career, line crews (8-10 people who train and stay together during fire season) started showing up and made my single firefighter days numbered. BC has some of the best trained fire crews in the world and we have excelled at putting out fires quickly and a big fire in my day was 3-600 hectares. Now we’re dealing with 80,000 hectare fires and nobody is prepared for that.
Forest firefighting is not as simple as going on a fire line and digging. There are methods and science to how fires are dealt with. Putting someone with no or little knowledge of firefighting is stupid and dangerous to everyone around them, including themselves, so leave it to the professionals as they have the training and knowledge to properly deal with forest fires.
Dean Soiland
Prince George
