Last summer’s wildfire situation motivated about 20 Upper Clearwater residents to form their own volunteer wildfire suppression crew.
“We live in fear of fire every year,” said Steve Murray, one of the organizers, “but this past summer was something else.”
Although there were no fires in the immediate vicinity, the extremely hot and dry conditions resulted in the the partial or complete closure of Wells Gray Park for most of the summer.
READ MORE: Wells Gray Provincial Park to re-open
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Upper Clearwater is the main gateway to the park and, with just one road in or out, is unusually vulnerable to fire.
Murray, who is a government-certified trainer with many years of firefighting experience, put on a S-100 basic firefigher course at no chargefor any residents who were interested.
The emphasis was on hands-on training, he said, with the students learning how to handle all the equipment, set up hose lays, sprinklers and so on.
His son Aaron Murray and Kay-Lee Fraser helped put on the course.
They also put on a course in Clearwater, charging just half the usual rate.
They did some fundraising and were able to get enough hose and other equipment to set up one Wajax Mark 3 pump – a standard workhorse in fighting forest fires.
Local residents donated the use of a truck with 800 gallon tank and other gear.
Several drills were held and were well attended.
Nearly every resident of Upper Clearwater already had or acquired firefighting equipment to protect their homes, he noted.
“Each place has its own system, that’s defensive,” Murray said. “The Mark 3 pump and the other equipment, that’s aggressive.”
The crew is well aware of its own limitations in terms of equipment, training, experience and physical conditioning, he noted.
“We’re going to use the fall-back system,” Murray said. “The goal would be to get on a fire quickly and get it under control. If it’s too much for us to handle, then we fall back.”
The crew boss predicted that other communities across the province would follow Upper Clearwater’s lead, if they haven’t already.
He did not want to get drawn into the controversy about Forest Service’s use or non-use of contract crews versus non-contract crews.
He did feel, however, that with the centralization happening in firefighting, it could be two hours or more before a Forest Service crew could respond to a fire in the area.
During the summer nearly every residence in the valley underwent a FireSmart evaluation to make them more resistant to wildfires.
As part of that process several slash piles were created.
The plan is to use those piles for training this fall as they are burned.
Other training planned includes learnng more about radios and communicatioins.
During the sumer the team had its own radio system set up so that people from one end of the valley to the other could keep in touch, even if the telephones went out.
Those involved want to keep the crew alive and so have organized it under the Societys Act as a non-profit.
A fundraiser for the crew is planned for the Black Horse Saloon on Sunday evening, Oct. 22.
Look for details in next week’s Times.
