Airdrie Fire Department helping out with wildfires near Yellowknife

Three members of the Airdrie Fire Department will be helping out up North when it comes to the wildfires near Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. 

Brad Larway went up to Yellowknife last Thursday, Lorri Laface left this past Sunday and Airdrie Fire Chief Mike Pirie is leaving this Thursday.

All three AFD members are deploying with Canada Task Force 2 (CanTF2). The CanTF2 team is comprised of over 150 Rescue Specialists, Doctors, Paramedics, Structural Engineers, Communications Specialists, Logistics Specialists, and Command Staff. 

Chief Pirie explains what CanTF2 does, "When disasters hit communities [like] floods, fires, earthquakes, [and] tornadoes, this is one of the teams that can be used to help local resources.”  

Our Airdrie members will be a part of the incident management team.

"This is the group of people that helped provide command, control, organization, planning, logistics, and help run the operations of an incident to support municipalities."

Currently, an evacuation order is in effect for Yellowknife. With CanTF2 coming in to help, it means the locals that were running the operations will now have some aid.

"You got to remember the people that are initially running these things, it's their homes that are being evacuated. When you can drop in there and help give them some relief and bring somebody your expertise, there's an immense sense of pride and being able to do that; we just don't advertise it a lot."

Each member will be up North between seven to nine days and could be deployed more than once if needed. 

"One of the things that really jumps out at me is there seems to be a lack of politics, which is what should occur in a disaster, we should be working together. I'm actually really impressed as an outsider at this moment."

British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are all helping out with the situation in the Northwest Territories.

Chief Pirie is looking forward to heading up north to help out where he can, he is also very proud of the AFD members that are also up there fighting these fires. 

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