A piece of life-saving equipment is being deployed across northern Ontario that can turn any pickup truck into a fire truck.
The unit, known as a fire skid, consists of a 1,000-litre reservoir with a shut-off valve at the bottom.
“Four adults can lift this when it’s empty, off and on the back of a pickup,” said Kathleen Doherty, the rapid response team lead with Global Medic, an aid organization that delivered several units to Thunder Bay, On. this week. “It fills any ¾ tonne pickup. It plunks on the back; you fill the thousand lire reservoir with water and you’re good to go fighting fires.”
Many of the over 190 wildfires burning in Ontario are in remote and hard-to-get-to areas. Most of the communities being threatened are not accessible by road.
“These are quite useful for volunteer or rural fire departments that don’t have access to complicated equipment like fire trucks,” Doherty said, adding they are able to be delivered into back country areas with rough terrain.
The fire skids are being delivered by airplane to a number of rural communities, including some where vulnerable people have already been evacuated. They are being used to put out hot spots and help keep encroaching fires at bay.
“They want to stay the community, they don’t want to leave it behind and have it destroyed by fire,” she said. “So we are extending the arm of help... to say we want you to stay in your community and we want to help save the infrastructure and save the homes so these vulnerable populations can return to their homes,” Doherty said.
In northwestern Ontario, 10 communities have already been evacuated, with many more being told to prepare to leave should conditions worsen.
In a statement late Saturday night, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada is taking an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to the wildfires.
“In response to the devastating fires, Canada is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach,” Carney wrote on social media. “More than 5,300 firefighting personnel have been deployed across the country. Nearly 300 aircraft are in the field — from waterbombers and helicopters to evacuation aircraft.”
But with nearly 1,000 fires burning across the country, resources are being stretched thin. Fire crews cannot respond to every fire which make the fire skids a vital tool for many communities.
“It is so versatile and doesn’t require a forklift to lift it onto an apparatus to make it functional, so that’s what makes it so adaptable to these remote environments and hard to reach places,” Doherty said.
While there is some favourable weather in the forecast, officials say it will take several days of sustained rain to make a significant dent in getting the fires under control.
