Kamloops wildfire officer on ground in Los Angeles describes ‘horrific’ devastation, ‘astronomical’ scale of fire fight

“Our role here is to integrate with the incident management teams currently managing the Palisades wildfire, both to provide operational support where feasible, but also to gather learnables to return home,” Desrosiers said, noting four Kamloops-based personnel have been deployed.

She said 22 BCWS ground crew from across the province are en route to California and expected join yet-to-be-determined fire lines on Friday (Jan. 17).

Desrosiers, who arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday (Jan. 11), said the Palisades fire – which has burned nearly 10,000 hectares and is the largest of four blazes in the area – has not experienced significant growth this week, but red flag warning conditions were threatening on Wednesday afternoon.

She said Santa Ana winds from the north, should they arrive, have potential to spur increased fire behaviour.

“It’s incredibly dry here,” Desrosiers said. “There is possibility of further impact and it’s really hard to see that and just to know how many people have been so immensely impacted by what has happened over the past week. We’re certainly not in the clear.”

Desrosiers said commendable work by ground crews on perimeter hot spots have helped to limit the expansion of the Palisades fire and strong winds are forecasted to wane on Wednesday night in the Los Angeles area.

The scale of the suppression effort is astonishing, according to Desrosiers.

She said BCWS standard fire camps for significant incidents in B.C. often house between 400 to 500 personnel.

More than 5,000 personnel have been deployed in the Los Angeles area.

“It’s our scale times 10,” Desrosiers said. “The number of people here working to support not only the folks on the ground, but everybody in camp, as well, it’s really astronomical. It’s very cool and really interesting to see how they manage something at this scale and [there are] certainly learnables for us, as well.”

Also new to Desrosiers is battling an all-flanks interface fire with such mammoth magnitude.

“It’s common for interface fires [in B.C.] and several communities have been very heavily impacted, especially in recent years,” she said. “What’s unique to me on this incident specifically is that all flanks of this fire are interface. In B.C., it’s often maybe a flank or two and then often the rest of the fire may be burning at higher elevations or in the backcountry or wherever it may be. The scale of the destruction is immense.”

Cal Fire has offered support in B.C. in recent years and has been helping the BC Wildfire Service implement fire growth modelling software as part of the developing relationship between the organizations.

Desrosiers said her peers take pride in giving back on the ground.

“The fire landscape not only here in California and in B.C., but across the world, has changed so dramatically in the last couple of years and it’s a growing issue,” she said. “We recognize that no one of us is going to adapt and manage this alone. Ideally, the next step would be to have folks from Cal Fire come and visit us up in B.C. in a similar context to provide support and also learn from BC Wildfire.”

by Marty Hastings

Kamloops wildfire officer on ground in Los Angeles describes ‘horrific’ devastation, ‘astronomical’ scale of fire fight

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