Quiet wildfire season allows Kamloops air tankers to head south

Aug 12, 2016 | 5:34 PM

KAMLOOPS — With fewer fires to fight than normal this summer the Kamloops Fire Centre has been able to send some of their resources to our southern neighbours. 

BC’s chief fire information officer, Kevin Skrepnek, says two air tankers and a bird dog aircraft have been sent to the US to assist with that country’s busy fire season. 

“They are seeing quite a bit of activity in the US right now, particularly in California,” Skrepnek said. “The US air tanker fleet is actually federally managed for the most part, so the US Forest Service was moving more of its resources into California to assist. So they brought in an air tanker group from BC into the pacific northwest to help kind of back-fill for some of those resources.”

Skrepnek says the group is normally based out of Kamloops, but cooler, rainy weather in June and July has kept the fire risk fairly low. 

He says it’s very common to share resources with other wildfire agencies. 

“They’ve been mainly working on fires in Wyoming, based out of Billings, Montana right now,” Skrepnek said. “We expect them to still be there for some time. It’s an open-ended deployment at this point, and certainly we can bring them back to BC at a moment’s notice if needed.”

Skrepnek adds that even though it has been a quiet fire season so far people still need to be cautious with their fires in the back country, especially with a forecast of hot and dry weather in the coming days. 
 

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