Phillip Shiels of Gosford is still recovering from a six-week deployment to Canada as one of two SES volunteers sent with a NSW firefighting team to help deal with out-of-control wildfires.
Departing on July 19, he and Tony Morris from Bathurst were based in British Columbia, where they provided skilled logistics and finance support to Canadian firefighters.
“When we arrived, we had a couple of days for briefing and getting over jetlag and then we worked 14 days straight, 12-13 hours a day,” Shiels said.
“We had a couple of days off, then another 14-day stretch, before several days of debriefing prior to coming home.”
Shiels was part of the incident management team, helping with costing the massive fire control effort.
“The fires were out of control while we were there,” he said.
“We were mostly concerned with property protection and particularly the protection of many sacred sites in the area.
“It was mountainous hilly terrain, with massive pine forests encouraging the fire to spread all the way to the Alaskan border.”
Shiels said Aussie firefighters helping tackle the blaze were faced with conditions very different to those here in Australia.
“Here tankers are able to get through a lot of fire trails to attack the fire, but over there we saw a lot of manual clearing and helicopter water drops,” he said.
It was his first deployment overseas and Shiels said he was pleased to have been chosen from a number of volunteers.
“It was a bit of a challenge in that we had to learn their systems to operate effectively but I was glad to have been part of it,” he said.
“There is an agreement between the US and Canada and Australia and New Zealand that we help each other out with bushfires when needed.
“With our seasons being opposite to each other it works well.
“I know crews from the northern hemisphere helped out with our dreadful 2019/20 fire season.
“Right now the situation is ongoing over there and we still have crews in Canada and in the US helping with the California fires.
“I enjoy giving back – it’s the Australian way.”
The wildfires in Canada have been raging since February and have so far burned more than 1.4 million hectares of land.
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