in bc's forest fire season millions of acres of forests go up in flames and towns are evacuated leaving thousands homeless [Music] firefighters battle temperatures as hot as a blast furnace this heat combined with thin air at high mountain altitudes makes conditions seem like hell unleashed fire begins to surround you you don't know where it's safe to go flames higher than a 10-story building can suck whatever oxygen is left right out of a person's lungs it's one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet in the past 10 years nearly 50 forest firefighters were killed in north america it will take a great deal of courage for these trained forest fire specialists to fight this relentless and very dangerous enemy [Music] [Applause] [Music] at the kamloops fire center the dispatcher has received a call a smoke plume has been reported only a half dozen miles from the kamloops firebase but because of the rugged terrain the site is impossible to reach by road a three-person initial attack crew is being dispatched by helicopter to investigate to be ready in five minutes when we're on red alert like right now so we're gonna load up all our gear jump in the helicopter and go have a look these elite firefighters are the advanced guard of the fire service their job is to hit hard at the fire while it's still small before it grows too big to be controlled and threatens lives and property the crew receives an update football field size rate of spread fast a lightning strike was all that was needed to spark tinder dry trees and undergrowth [Music] last year this team faced their biggest test ever as they fought their way through the most devastating fire season in the province's history over a million and a half acres were burned an area equal in size to the city of vancouver last summer we were evacuating people's homes we were telling people they had to leave we had fire that was spawning two kilometers ahead and you don't feel safe anymore in all 50 000 people were evacuated and nearly 400 homes and businesses were destroyed but many more were saved despite the incredible amount of destruction not one civilian life was lost thanks to the speed and skill of the firefighting teams over seven thousand firefighters from bc and all over canada responded to 2500 separate forest fires i wouldn't want to do it they have to be very brave very uh individual like people have lots of courage and they're doing a fantastic job [Music] there's nothing more frightening to a firefighter than an out of control forest fire with its oxygen sucking firestorms raging at the temperature of molten steel gobbling up everything in sight what makes fighting forest fires even more frightening is that besides wits and instincts there is very little else to rely on for personal protection what every firefighter should be carrying is our fire shelter uh you never want to have to use these every member of the crew brings a one-man metallic pouch of laminated reflective aluminum made to withstand up to 900 degrees fahrenheit it is meant to protect a firefighter from direct flame contact it says it can hold it up to 500 degrees but i don't think the body can survive that in a recent forest fire in the u.s some firefighters survived using it three four survivors made it in them but they got to a safe zone to deploy it but the others weren't didn't get through the only thing that would put me in that kind of danger is if i knew somebody was uh in need of help [Music] leslie duke crew leader and 10-year veteran of the forest fire service wastes no time leaving with his team for the hot spot the summer is particularly dry so when even a trace of smoke is reported the forest fire service's response is immediate just like a regular city fire department on the other side of the mountain a huge fire is spreading the last thing the fire bosses need is another nearby fire joining it i've got a sounding from um seven thousand feet this morning was pushing about 45 clicks so les's job is to knock the small blaze out cold but stopping the big fire will be a real battle a four-round heavyweight bout for an army of firefighters first aircraft will drop chemical retardants to slow the fires advance then machines will cut paths through the forest to isolate the fire and to starve at a fuel and prevent the blaze from spreading a swath of forest will be purposely set ablaze finally when the flames have died down water will be used to douse hot spots and drown hidden embers the crew is set down a few miles from the fireside because the rough terrain prevents their helicopter from landing any closer less surveyed the scene from the air but he and his crew can still come across dangers in the forest as they approach the fire bears mountain lions falling trees and rocks and lightning strikes are all unpredictable hazards of the wilderness [Music] yeah you can check that we're going to walk into the fire at this time and uh just to advise arielle is gonna sling our gear in and then he'll be back to uh back to kamloops to get a couple of can flex bags for us so he's got a bit of a hike into our fire so uh and those bags are pretty heavy so it's a lot quicker for him just to put it on his long line and he's gonna fly it right into the fire site and then he'll drop it off he doesn't have to get out or land or anything he's got a little button and it'll unhook so all our gear will be waiting there for us once we get there but it won't be a walk in the park for the members of the squad each of them must still carry 80 pounds of gear to the fire scene for over a mile uphill it's a physically punishing job to be part of an initial attack crew this load is compounded by an extreme heat of over a hundred degrees and the six thousand foot elevation imagine having a television set strapped to your back while you jog in a sauna forest firefighters must brave conditions like this before they even begin to tackle the fire they're essentially extreme athletes who put out fires for a living time is running out to get this fire under control the crew uses old-fashioned hand tools to clear a swath through the thick layer of flammable organic material called duff right down to the inert mineral soil beneath and this tool i'm using is a grub hole at grubhu it's something we like to use in cab loops every bit helps this trench of exposed rocky soil called a fire guard will form a ring around the fire so it won't spread and become a bigger threat cutting fire guards by hand may look like 19th century technology it is but it works les and his team are not the only ones fighting this two-headed dragon over the mountain and across a valley the fire services team have their hands full dealing with the much larger blaze that's a really big fight it's been burning out of control for more than a day and the danger to the nearby village is getting critical villagers are thinking about their own safety and preparing for the worst it's been kind of kind of weird like like it's i don't know like it's that close but it's up the hill but it's all the way over there but it could come come down here and it's just kind of just trying to get get ready if we have to leave the stress level when you're on the alert is high it's probably more high for people that haven't been able to communicate we've spent a lot of time setting up communication system with our local radio but they're still that worried that they may not hear the actual evacuation notice and those are the people that are quite concerned because they've seen this fire a fire like this come through in 71 that jumped over the mountain behind me unexpectedly picked up by the high wind and completely wiped out 18 of the native homes on the reserve just above the town came into town and there were people that had barely time to get out of the their homes with their children they couldn't take anything now this is a distinct possibility it's a deadly situation when a forest fire can jump or spawn ahead up to 100 miles an hour driven by strong winds at this speed it could reach the town in minutes last year a spawning blaze easily outran a fire truck trying to escape down a highway the fire is about they told us yesterday it's about about four kilometers away uh but it could spread that four kilometers in about uh in about a three hour time so it really wouldn't take a lot of time to get here at the base camp fire bosses meet to plan the firefighting strategy their plans are based on the fact that fire is a chemical reaction it depends on adequate supplies of three essentials heat oxygen and fuel to continue burning like knocking out a leg on a three-legged stool remove any one of these three elements and the fire goes out [Music] they decide to drop chemical fire retardance from the air in a pattern around the perimeter of the big fire the fire bosses hope the retardant will cut off the fire supply of fuel and slow its spread toward the village this must be done to make the situation safer for ground firefighters to go and fight the fire directly right now conditions on the ground are too dangerous for ground crews to approach the head of the fire with temperatures hotter than molten lead and heavy smoke making visibility and breathing difficult it would be suicide to put crews in there fire is actually a predictable adversary as it obeys the laws of physics all fires move in the direction of wind and uphill where there's a slope this makes deciding where to drop water and chemicals easy the hard part is deciding when the conditions are right and how much to drop the fire retardant used is a non-toxic solution of nitrate salts it's actually a lot like agricultural fertilizer the liquid is colored bright red for visibility it changes the chemistry of the fire to slow combustion and won't evaporate like water so it can be effective for weeks once it's applied but it's expensive to use a single load dropped cost thousands of dollars so retardant must be used judiciously on board this small nibble aircraft called a bird dog plane is an experienced air tanker pilot the man on his right is the fire control specialist he is the eye in the sky for the fire bosses back on the ground this morning he's planning a retardant drop on the mountain fire he has to assess the extent of fire and the direction in which it is moving 2 000 feet up danger is very present flying the bird dog is a tricky and dangerous job the smoke makes visibility poor in an airspace that's already crowded with aircraft right now there are a dozen planes and helicopters flying in and around a six square mile area without any air controller overseeing the operation very difficult for firefighting because we can't see what we're doing we're having to be really careful obviously for safety concerns that we don't put too much aircraft into the air at one time [Music] that looked like a close call but pilots have to get used to flying this close to get the job done but any slight miscalculation could mean disaster last year the only fatalities in the fire service were three pilots who lost their lives while on the job apart from doing the aerial survey the bird dog's other role is as a guide incoming air tankers must be shown the safest and most effective routes over the site to drop their loads the retardant drops are meant to hold the fire at bay not put it out the big message is we don't put them out you know our from the air they're put out on the ground the hard work on the ground is what puts them out what we want to do is buy them as much time as we can to make sure that that happens knocking out the fire is the job of the ground firefighters who are ready to jump into action when the conditions are a little safer it goes up to the bush and wires off the biggest mistake we can make in here is to get to get tunnel vision and uh in sort of a kill at all cost mentality where where there's a two percent probability of winning and we'll commit half the fleet to that two percent probability when over the hill or 150 miles away there's some fires that we could catch that that we have no aircraft available for uh because we're committed to a loser so a big part of the duty officer's role in here is to make sure that he's practicing that triage to make sure that we're we're losing in the right places and we're investing the resource and and committing the resource in the right places these fire cat retardant bombers are the most dependable weapon in the air tanker command's arsenal they may look old-fashioned but there aren't many other aircraft in the sky today that are as capable as these little planes or that have as colorful a past built in the early 1950s the grumman s2f tracker was a fast and nimble carrier-based submarine hunter after their work for the navy was over forest fire fighting services discovered that the tough little planes were perfectly suited to aerial firefighting heavily modified but with their distinctive bug-eyed profile intact these cold war-era grummans remain unchallenged in their new role as fire cat retardant bombers more than 50 years after they first took to the air [Music] while the bombers are hard at work at the big mountain fire les and his crew start to land their first punches against their fire dina is working hard on the fire guard but soon it will be time to use another tool water to cool and quench the fire the success of the operation depends on the supply of water being airlifted to them less calls for a delivery perfect we're set up minutes later the chopper is dropping a small portable water tank giving the crew a wading pool's worth of water to douse the fire water is heavy and difficult to supply in large quantities to remote locations they won't get another tank for a while so the firefighters have to use it at just the right time and place and be very careful not to waste it that's why their hoses are so small this pump may be light and compact but is powerful enough to deliver the precious water supply to the crew's small diameter hoses by now half the battle has been won the crew has got the fire under control so there's no chance it will spread and join the big fire but still they need to be alert a minor accident or injury can cascade into a life-threatening situation because of their location we're pretty remote but there's always a way out you know if if things go really sideways on you know we have to check in like every hour and a half whiskey 31 tango fire center go ahead so they have a pretty good idea what's going on here and if if anything does happen we can set up a medevac via a helicopter talk to you again if something happens at night you know you're going to be on your own until the morning so i mean that's always a pretty big concern i mean the job just inherently has a lot of dangers to it so and that is particularly true at this stage of the game alex is about to be reminded of one of those dangers he's busy clearing flammable debris from part of the fire guard to prevent the fire spreading into untouched parts of the forest the wood is tinder dry a few burning embers can ignite the dry branches in a moment while cutting a tree alex faces a flare up when brushed near the tree he is cutting catches fire but alex is prepared for that possibility by leaving himself a clear path to safety the crew could handle this flare-up with their own resources but with little water on site to spare less again calls for air support the helicopter returns with a bucket of water to douse the flames each bucket of water a helicopter carries weighs over a thousand pounds equivalent to a half dozen bathtubs full of water [Music] these firefighters have faced some situations where escape was not so easy last year there was some fire activity that i've never seen before like just like if you can picture a huge tornado that you see on tv on those documentaries storm chasers and what have you it's it looked just like that just a big tornado of fire smoke and debris spinning around there were some times when uh you're more or less surrounded by fire hairs on the back your neck sort of stand up a bit what's another big fear kev what are we scared of out here man what are we scared of each other yeah crews call ground firefighting doing the three d's it's dirty difficult and dangerous the trench warfare of the firefighting world but it's this backbreaking and painstaking toil that really knocks fires out as les and his team are proving the visible flames are now out buckets of water dropped from overhead are great for putting out fire on the surface but what's going on underneath the squad must now methodically scour the ground with their bare hands literally leaving no stone unturned as they search for the heat from hidden hot spots and glowing embers that's exactly what we're looking for something like that you know like that that can cause you problems an overlooked ember like this could cause the fire to reignite under the duff days or even weeks later before we leave this fire i mean it looks good right now i think i would i feel pretty confident with it i won't call it out quite yet and give it a few days for that but we can call it cold and and i expect that there won't be any action needed to take on it uh any longer that's the helicopter that we came in he's coming back we've got our gear ready he slung this into us and now he's gonna sling it out and then we'll walk back out while the small fire is now under control the situation is far different at the big mountain fire the raging blaze is gobbling up valuable stands of timber like matchsticks and getting closer and closer to the village by the minute now burning for two straight days the fire is still too hot to fight on the ground even with the help of the aerial drops of fire retardant now small gusts of southerly wind are pushing it up the steep mountain side in this area we're totally ringed by mountains and we have two main major weather systems one from the north and that area coming down which has brought in the past some extremely high winds winds that were knocking over trees destroying whole areas of the forest uh the winds were gusting up to 110 kilometers behind me here is another valley that comes all the way from whistler and pemberton now if we get a wind system from that direction or that direction we've got major problems we had a meeting yesterday morning and they had uh they told us that we are on alert and we won't have but a few minutes when they tell us to leave to get out of the valley dousing house roofs and tinder dry trees with water is the villagers best defense against this threat we're cutting down uh apricot tree it's right beside the house so other than that we're just trying to keep it cool around here these folks may well lose everything they own it's almost feels like a dream or something yeah a bad dream is that where you'd like me kevin matuga is flying a reconnaissance mission over the fire if the mountain fire continues to advance it will be kevin's tough job to tell the villagers that the battle has been lost and they must leave their town to its fate what we're dealing with right now is about a 1300 hectare fire it's burnt a lot of these valleys in front of us you can see it's burned right up to the rocks this is some of the most rugged terrain you'll find in bc mountains are extremely steep very rocky we go from valley bottoms at about 300 meters in elevation uh right to the top 700 meters in elevation the terrain makes fighting this fire especially challenging kevin knows what the fire crews are facing in their fight to save the town while aerial water and retardant bombing is spectacular for the villagers to watch they pin their hopes on the firefighting work that's being done on the ground uh but before that happens helicopters have to douse hot spots on the perimeter of the fire using buckets of water maneuvering in steep valleys to pick up water these pilots keep watch for dangerous obstacles like power lines which could snag their buckets and yank their aircraft out of the sky we are now at the second stage of the battle though the spread of the fire is being slowed by the retardant the crews have to start cutting a fire guard around the perimeter they must be careful not to get ahead of the fire and be trapped in front of advancing flames the head of the fire is still hot and very dangerous time is running out [Music] the villagers may well be forced to evacuate in a matter of hours we don't put our lives at risk for trees we don't put our lives at rick's risk for houses it's not worth it human life is is valuable to see somebody who's in danger and i've got to try to help that person that's the scariest situation for me because you no longer have a choice it's the third day of aerial firefighting the bad news the fire is only four miles from the village but the good news is that the fire's rate of spread has slowed allowing crews to make headway on the upper perimeters of the blaze to cool the fire's perimeter firefighters used the same type of small diameter hose that less's team used it's a technique that works most of the time today there's a problem this crew is ready to spray water on the fire but their main supply hose has been burned through they need a water tanker truck in a hurry new hoses are being laid they need the water urgently because a sudden gust of wind could whip the fire up forcing them to abandon their positions and retreat a tanker truck finally arrives with a precious supply of water armed with fully charged hoses the firefighters are finally able to get down to work [Music] now with new hope of being able to gain ground against the fire the firefighters will have a better chance of containing it it's rank five activity up at the top right now you're not going to be able to stop it so we're just going to contour with it strengthen this side around across the top and then hopefully when it dies down in the natural feature we can shut it down in a large scale version of what les and his crew were doing at their fire some of these crews are hard at work using heavy machines to cut fire guards through the forest [Music] hours ago this was untouched forest but this destructive looking fire guard will protect hundreds more hectares of wooded land and the people who live and work nearby as the fire gets larger it creates almost like a a snow cone it starts at the small and or at the base is very small and it builds towards the top and it widens out as we get to the head of the fire so we're just going to establish control lines and and pinch off the fire at the head when we get the right conditions even at this lower perimeter where the fire's intensity is less air temperatures beside the fire are approaching 2100 degrees fahrenheit hot enough to sear unprotected flesh in seconds yeah it's too hot kevin has been near the fire for less than a minute but he has to move out of the way as the heat quickly gets the better of him yeah that's better his clothing is made of fire resistant nomex material but he relies on good sense to not stray too close to the fire the groundwork is going full swing and the firefighters are making progress despite the dangers fighting forest fires is a choice that most of these people wouldn't think about changing for something safer steve butcher gave up a secure future as a social worker for this adrenaline-fueled lifestyle when i'm firefighting i i get to feel like i'm i'm making a difference i get to go to a fire and i get to dig guard there's something that i can do to make a difference i get to cut down a tree i get to call in tankers i get to make decisions that that will make a difference and in terms of activity when i'm doing social work i'm sitting at a desk and uh when i'm firefighting i'm out there i'm driving beautiful brand new ford trucks i'm traveling in helicopters i am going all over british columbia and uh i can't say social work as exciting as that if you can get into this job there's something special about you everybody here there's something special about them they had to been amazingly physically fit and probably the most important is if you can't get along with people this is not the place to be i don't know for adrenaline junkies but you definitely are here for the lifestyle i think like there's some smart guys back here that are smart people that could be doing a lot of other things these attributes have proven value in the field where each fire season firefighters face new challenges every day they must adapt to quickly changing conditions and be willing to push themselves to the limit of their endurance firefighting by its nature is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world but it's thanks to a grueling selection process and top-level training that forest firefighters have one of the lowest injury and death rates in the profession safety's always first that's the number one priority never put yourself in harm's way or you try not to anyway it's all about minimizing risk to live to fight fires another day but sometimes danger finds them first operating machines like this in these conditions is more than a little dangerous heavy equipment can sink into soft ground and roll over but if fire gets too close the operator should be able to move his machine out of the way unless something goes wrong the caterpillar's engine is overheated and stalled the operator is trying to restart the engine right away if he doesn't get himself and the machine out of there in a hurry the heat from the fire could boil the hundreds of gallons of diesel oil in the caterpillar's fuel tank a flash ignition of escaping fumes could cause the tank to explode trapping the operator in a burning machine a bucketing helicopter on its way to the main fire is quickly diverted to help just in time the machine's operator gets the engine started again and is able to escape the flames this time he made it but to be sure the stubborn hotspot doesn't give the caterpillar operator any more trouble the helicopter drops its load on the [Music] flames [Music] ironically at the other end of the fire guard crews are hard at work preparing to set a fire the crews are busy getting ready for a controlled fire or prescribed burn using a drip torch we're burning off the unburnt timber in between the fire guard we put in and the existing fire and this is the third round of the bout this technique gets rid of flammable material left between the fire guard and the fire itself it's a better method than laying waste to the whole forest with a bulldozer in nature small forest fires are actually beneficial they clear away the buildup of dead trees and branches leaving healthy strong trees to survive [Music] this part isn't burnt yet now so we want to get this this fuel burnt just to get it out of the way so we'll have to be concerned with it anymore uh so i'm just gonna try to go back and forth across the slope just to get some fire to draw it uphill and hopefully but by the time i'm done this will all be on fire but the success of prescribed burns depends on the skill of firefighters like travis abbey and his partners we've got a pretty good slope here so they should carry up there fairly well to avoid any problems travis takes into account the slope of the land wind direction air temperature and humidity of the wood or fuel when he sets the woods alight more important than anything else travis always leaves himself an escape route to safety any time we're going to do any sort of burning off you want to make sure that we have water in place or if something does get a little more aggressive than we want it to then we can get after it right away he keeps an eye on where the fire is burning this is a strategy of literally scorching the earth to deprive the fire of fuel it is better to sacrifice a few trees than to lose a whole forest [Music] or a nearby town so ideally in a perfect world this would be burnt clean completely right right to the fire before leaving to work with a private logging company travis honed his firefighting skills with the bc forest fire service it's my 15th year started when i was 18 and sorry it was supposed to be a summer job and turned into a pseudo career sort of thing i guess yeah that's good still enjoy it it's great yeah there's some excitement so lots of variety too which is nice so that's fun i think the only real fear i have i guess is the stuff you can't control just try to cool it off a little bit so it's not getting right to the tops of the trees just worried about it going that direction so but the fire is quickly getting aggressive despite travis's skill and experience this situation might be getting away from him quick action from above cools things down before the fire leaps across the fire guard and starts burning out of [Music] control [Music] helicopters are amazingly effective firefighting tools as they can drop buckets of water on flames with surgical precision it's exhausting and dangerous work for the pilots who have to have unbelievably steady nerves and concentration every moment they're in the air a helicopter is an unforgiving vehicle to fly in the best conditions the aircraft's weight and balance can change suddenly when the bucket carrying a water load equivalent to the weight of a piano is filled or emptied this imbalance can lead to the loss of control in a crash we've got three pieces of heavy machinery on this fire uh two two holes just to make the task more hazardous dangerous gusts of wind and hot air currents caused by the fire can destabilize a chopper and send it careening to the ground night is falling grounding helicopters and the air tankers even though there is still plenty of work to do to get control over the on it tonight and i think fire gonna it'll be a tough go in a challenging period for us to get on top of this fire uh uh tomorrow we'll have a definitely a big fight in our house [Music] for the third night ground crews will be hard at work dousing the base and flanks of the fire fire boss steve shell is in charge of the heavy equipment let's give it a good assessment before we put any equipment in there let's make sure it's going to be safe to work in that area if you guys have any hesitation he consults his crew of machine operators to create a plan for the next day's operations what time do you start in the morning oh it gets late around 6. steve decides this time not to use the heavy machines at night because of the increased accident risk in the steep terrain like a weary army the firefighters will use the coolness of knight to try to gain ground on their enemy they work by hand in the darkness without the help of heavy ground machinery and aircraft the next hours are crucial with the fire moving more slowly and the winds still the firefighters are hoping to secure the perimeters of the fire all the way up the mountainside they hope to accomplish this before the heat of the morning sun gives new life to the fire [Music] this is the fourth day of the operation and the heavy equipment is back online busy cutting the fire's access to fresh fuel nearly hundred firefighters worked all night and they made good progress it's time to assess the dangers lurking in these burned areas but at this point it is much too treacherous to allow the crews in to douse the smoldering embers and hot spots dead and dying trees what are traditionally called snags in green stands of timber are dangerous in themselves but once you put fire through the forest obviously you get burnt trees that are likely to fall we have trained assessors and snag fallers that will sweep through an area that's been burned or an area that we haven't been in yet they'll flag trees or assassin tire stands and the the hand followers will go through with the chainsaws and put those trees down allowing the crews to go in with the root system burning out on this tree it's burning right now and it's left to burn like this it's going to fall on its own so we want to make sure we clean this up before we get fire crews in here and come down on their heads even trees untouched by fire can be dangerous pounded by tons of water and retardant trunks can be weakened and fall without warning on ground crews underneath it's like working in a half-demolished house well there's been a number of close calls uh you know one and one in particular a tree that was weakened by the same type of thing that we're seeing here broke off in the wind and fell towards us and i ended up on the ground and the tree fell and it literally fell between my boots where i was lying on the ground it was as close as i'd want it to be we have to follow these dangerous trees that have been marked by an assessor barry's job is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet lumberjacking a moment's inattention could cause a tree weighing thousands of pounds to tip over and crush him add a fire-ravaged forest full of half-burned trees into the equation and you've got a job that only a very few experienced professionals would ever attempt it's fairly dangerous yeah because as you can see most of these trees are all burnt out on the bottom or they're a dry snag like this here the tree is over 50 percent burnt out so when you cut into that a lot of times you'll cut into it and it'll fall either way which causes a big problem for a lot of fallers there's also the added risk of a horrific injury from the razor sharp teeth of the chainsaw you can see if you look at my stump there and you see the how the notch was and if you look at the notch in the back cut you see that tree is an exact line with my notch and uh that's the name of the game these tree fallers have the danger of their job multiplied by yet another factor barry and his assistants must pay attention to what's going on over their heads or risk being crushed under an avalanche of water and tree trunks [Music] this tangle of fallen trees was created not by fire but by a single load dropped from a giant water bomber despite the incredible risks and dangers of the job every youngster yearns to be a firefighter seventeen-year-old tyler has had this dream for years he signed on for a work-study program at his high school the teams him up with the firefighters at the kamloops fire center tyler was assigned to an initial attack team he goes with them on every call i would like to be a firefighter it's very fun i get to ride in helicopters and stuff i'm in a three-man crew but i was the fourth one um and they love the fourth one because that's extra help a on the three men it's great to have somebody who's like a rookie around been doing firefighters and taking out the flame and stuff like that we get them cleaning our trucks and basically doing the dirty work that we'd have to do otherwise so we really appreciate it actually this is my first time doing work doing like house cleaning kind of jobs like anyone uh he's eager he's excited everything's new to him and uh every experience is a fresh experience for him so it's uh it's good for all of us to have that around in only two weeks with the firefighters tyler hasn't had the chance to experience extreme fire conditions like his mentors have so this is the standard vc firefighters um weather kit it's a great thing about young guys they haven't seen it they're not afraid of it people don't understand they think that when they fight a fire that they can just stand there with a hose and spray but there's embers coming in from all over the place that are burning all over your neck you've got smoke blowing in from all the different sides you get disorientated and you don't know up from down you can't breathe no more oxygen coming in and fire begins to surround you you don't know where it's safe to go those kind of confusing conditions are are what scares the hell out of me i don't want him to experience it but that's the part of the job that he hasn't seen yet inside the kamloops base things are busy [Music] packs of equipment have to be sorted and prepared for the next mission and food supplies have to be replenished [Music] bringing along a supply of tasty edibles is high on the priority list energy that's how we get through a long day at work chocolate almonds each team has to be self-sufficient while on the job carrying everything they need with them just creating a little shopping list for them so when i get out to a fire and i'm stuck overnight i'm just kind of planning the meal that i'm gonna eat these other guys are giving a shopping list because they can't be there so they're trusting us to buy the right thing nothing too junky with their gear stowed and ready for a call these guys are set for a shopping mission leaving their colleagues with plenty to do at the fire center the crews of the big mountain fire just got a lucky break the temperatures have dropped a little which could give the firefighters the chance they need to give the fire a killing blow yeah go ahead and launch kamloops the dispatcher has been asked to launch every available aircraft and send them to this atr 3560. back to the big mountain fire [Music] foreign [Music] it will be their second go at this stubborn blaze which has been burning steadily for nearly four days there is hope the attack would be successful temperatures are milder and there's no sign yet of strong winds that would blow the fire in the direction of the village there is hope the attack would be successful as air temperatures have been milder earlier in the day also the expected high winds that would blow the fire in the direction of the village have held off so far but a change in weather is forecast promising hot gusty winds and higher temperatures later in the day this allows the air tanker command only a few crucial hours to give the fire a final knockout blow and stop it in its tracks every available aircraft is being launched to give the advancing head of this stubborn fire a pounding that must be delivered before the winds pick up look at all the information as we're taxiing out basically we just want to get in the air and find everything in there in the right direction and 31's on the roll 26. [Music] [Music] okay [Music] that was a bird dog there he was beeping his horn so they're going to drop some retardant up above us okay guided by the bird dog plane the fire cat tankers and water bombers are dropping huge quantities of water and liquid retardant on the advancing head and perimeter of the fire [Music] [Applause] touching down at a speed of 80 miles an hour a walking pace for aircraft this cl-415 water bomber scoops up water through a tiny six-inch intake scoop in its hull it takes only 12 seconds to pick up a 1 600 gallon load of water before lifting off from the lake's surface that's enough water to cover an entire football field an inch deep another water bomber comes in right behind the first any miscalculation of speed or distance could have disastrous consequences but these pilots are specialists in the art of flying these big heavy planes the ground crews are also making significant gains by the end of the day faces look more relaxed in the mobile command center there's good news for the firefighters and the villagers we're going to lift the alert immediately and whatever it takes his time frame that's fine with me after a combined air and ground battle lasting four days this final intense bombardment of the air tanker command has done its job and cooled down the head of the fire in the next few days ground crews will douse the remaining visible fire and patrol the fire guards the villagers are relieved and grateful for the work of the firefighters people will approach you and say thank you and thank your firefighters and thank the people that are that are here to to save us which is evident by the signs you see around town the yellow ribbons the the campaign that's there for support it's uh it's a good feeling one of the things that's never mentioned is how dangerous it is for them until you get up there with them and see them in the smoke in those helicopters and they're flying close to the mountains close to the trees trees are actually above them they can't see where they're going and inhaling that smoke all day it's just just incredible now it's nature's turn to dampen embers and cool the parched forests with the first real rainfall in almost five months comes the end of the fire season in british columbia the interior of british columbia boasts some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world but it's a dangerous beauty a place where the most devastating and spectacular forest fires on the planet occur [Music] and a place where some of the toughest firefighters around meet the greatest challenge of all forest fire you