First responders train for interface fires in the South Okanagan | 24CA News
With hearth season approaching within the South Okanagan, hearth crews started making ready for it by coaching to cope with interface fires.
The coaching occurred within the space of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory on Saturday and it was the second of its type.
“We’re gathering a bunch of local volunteer fire departments together to practise our preset plans to work on our communications, work on our deployment, and test drive our plan to make sure it works in a real event,” mentioned Dennis Smith, Naramata hearth chief.
Interface fires occur when a wildfire poses a risk to constructions and close by communities and to coach for that, crews created mock situations.
“We had the fire on the roadside, which is not uncommon in the Southern Interior and moving toward the community of St. Andrews,” mentioned Beau Michaud, Penticton Fire Zone BC Wildfire technician.
“My role today was to focus on how long it would take the fire going from the point of origin to the structures and some of the tactical things the fire department can do to protect those structures.”
According to fireplace officers, interface fires have gotten extra frequent yr over yr, particularly with the inhabitants growing within the south.
“I think you can see last year with the Keremeos Creek fire and the year before the Nk’Mip, previously Christie Mountain, the local interface fires are becoming more frequent so that means our training needs to become more frequent,” mentioned Leslie Roos, Kaleden assistant hearth chief.
With interface fires being such a posh callout, a number of companies are usually concerned, together with the RCMP, BC Ambulance, BC Wildfire and the fireplace division. All of these companies took half in Saturday’s coaching to practise response instances, communications and the best way to cope with a real-life state of affairs.
“RCMP come along to help us with closing roads, keeping the public away from the hazard as well as the possible evacuation of a local community,” mentioned Roos.
“And we have BC Ambulance, so (Saturday) we had what we call an incident within, an incident where we are working the fire and perhaps the firefighter has become injured and BC Ambulance are here to support us in that.”
Crews are planing to proceed the occasion subsequent yr and increase it to extra members and different companies.
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