Candle Lake fire department receives fire suppression units from Global Medic

By Nick Nielsen

With the Shoe fire just 14 kilometres away from the eastern side of Candle Lake and the subdivision of Minowukaw Beach, Candle Lake Emergency Services is now better equipped to fight the 408,000-hectare blaze.

On Monday, the Resort Village of Candle Lake received nearly $30,000 worth of equipment from Global Medic, a Canadian charity that offers support to people dealing with disasters, poverty or conflicts with humanitarian aid. The charity donated four different skid units which are small water tanks along with pumps, fuel tanks and hoses on reels that can be thrown into the back of a pickup truck to deal with small spot fires and are easily transferable should they need to be moved to another truck.

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Candle Lake fire chief Jim Arnold said the plan is to station the four trucks around the resort village to have them at the ready should a spot fire flare up.

“What it comes down to is fire throws off brands (embers) that can go for two kilometers and still be able to light a fire. So our plan is to deploy these skid units throughout the village so that we have an opportunity to take care of fires when they’re small,” Arnold said.

“We’ve strategically placed 12 pumps throughout the village that we can access for quick water, so we’ll pull water out of the lake, we’ll fill these skids and make sure we’re ready to go as well.”

Each of the skid units can be operated by two people. One person mans the pump, while the other mans the hose.

“Even in a 50-kilometre wind blowing directly at the fire, the fire is still creeping towards Candle Lake. It gains about 400 metres every day against the wind. That’s a problem,” Arnold added.

“This fire is massive, so I am pushing to be prepared.”

Arnold said the firebreak being built around Candle Lake is about 40 per cent complete, and should be done within the next four days if they can keep working at the same pace they have been and don’t need to take workers away from building the firebreak to fight fires in other places.

While Global Medic is supplying the Candle Lake Fire Department with four skid units, a fifth was also brought for the Lakeland Fire Department. Another 13 units are being delivered to fire departments around Saskatchewan, including one to Buckland Fire and Rescue and six going to Warman.

The donations come through a partnership between Global Medic and the Saskatchewan Association of Fire Chiefs (SAFC). SAFC President Mike Kwasnica said it all started with a conversation in Alberta.

“Our executive director and one of our directors managed to stumble across them at a trade show, and through conversations that they started to have they looked at what was going on in Saskatchewan and how they could help, and it has turned into what you see here today,” Kwasnica said.

“And this is just the tip of the iceberg… It sounds like they’re going to be a fantastic asset for us here in Saskatchewan.”

Executive director Rahul Singh said that since 2002, Global Medic has been operating out of Canada to help six million people in 90 countries around the world. The charity is funded by donations from Canadians, and he said the need for help to fight fires in Saskatchewan is being noticed across the country, even in his home base in Toronto.

“These trucks are going to go defend this town,” he said.

“I just want us to take a moment and thank the folks on the front line for the hard work they’re doing, and I’d remind the nation to pull together to help, because this is the heart of Canada and needs our help right now.”

“It doesn’t seem like a day to celebrate, but we are celebrating the gift that we’re receiving today from Global Medic,” said Colleen Lavoie, mayor of Candle Lake.

“We know that the fire is still a little under 14 kilometers away. We are waiting for the (Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency) to let us know when it will be time for mandatory evacuation. Once we hear confirmation from them, we will call a meeting of the village council and make the necessary motions to go into state of emergency and to call a mandatory evacuation.”

Lavoie said the donation is part of a larger response that has made her proud to be a part of Candle Lake.

“There have been hundreds of people volunteering and showing up and taking their shift, or making things at home and bringing them for the firefighters to eat. They’ve had an amazing group of volunteers. We’ve had a volunteer co-ordinator who’s done an amazing job of making sure that we have enough people at each shift, and we’re working on that right now as we go through the evacuation,” she said. “We will have a few helping our local restaurant, because he doesn’t have enough employees to feed everybody, so we were getting shifts of volunteers to help out through the next little while. So the community is amazing. I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to live here with these people.”