With all 13 Alberta wildfires under control, the province is sending 140 more firefighters to British Columbia to help combat the extreme fire hazard situation in the coastal province.
The deployment almost doubles the number of Alberta firefighters that have been deployed to B.C. during this fire season.
Most of the 140 deployed will complete a two-week stint before returning home to Alberta.
The province maintains enough firefighters to quickly respond to any new wildfires detected in Alberta’s Forest Protection Area and the exported firefighters can be recalled very quickly if the wildfire situation in Alberta changes unexpectedly.
“We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t been experiencing the same type of weather that B.C.
has — that long stretch of hot and dry,” said Sustainable Resource Development spokeswoman Anastasia Drummond. “We’ve been getting these impulses of moisture coming through, which has really helped out our wildfire situation. Any new starts we do get, we’re able to respond to them quite quickly and put them out and get them under control.”
The province dispatched the first batch of about 150 wild-land firefighters to B.C. at the beginning of August. Most have since returned home.
