FORESTRY Corporation’s Chris Scollen, a seasoned Crew Leader and Operations Planner, deployed to Canada this week to assist with the nation’s fire containment efforts.
Chris, who is based at Taree, has worked with Forestry Corporation for five years and volunteered with the NSW Rural Fire Service for 25 years.
He flew to Winnipeg, Manitoba with 14 other NSW and ACT fire specialists to serve as a Safety Officer in a mixed Incident Management Team (IMT) that oversees fire control across the province.
“The role I am undertaking involves identifying hazards that arise in the field, whether that be weather changes, a shift in fire intensity, or high winds, and also mapping dangerous trees to ensure firefighter safety remains the number one priority,” Chris said.
“A lot of the major fires are burning in rugged, isolated terrain so I’ll also be coordinating plans to ensure firefighters can exit the field safely as fires evolve, and this includes forming helicopter insertion and extraction safety plans,” he said.
Chris said he was looking forward to the challenge and the opportunity to learn about new fire behaviour and containment strategies in the Canadian landscape.
He will spend 33 days on deployment.
NSW has this year sent 140 firefighters to Canada, and more than 400 firefighters from across Australia and New Zealand have deployed since June.
Forestry Corporation’s firefighting crews have been part of these consecutive deployments.
The fires burning across Canada have grown in both size and number as summer in the Northern Hemisphere has intensified. More than 4,000 fires have burnt across 14 million hectares of land.
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