2023 will be remembered as Canada’s worst season on record for wildfires, with thousands of people forced to flee their homes and millions of hectares of forest burned.
“We’ve had the craziest wildfire season we’ve ever seen,” said Rodney Schmidt, the fire chief in High Level, a community in far northwestern Alberta that has been threatened by wildfires several times in recent years. This year was no exception.
“We started at the end of April and we never finished until the second week of October.”
Schmidt’s crews in northern Alberta fought fires in 14 different communities, helping out wherever they could — knowing first-hand the dangers of wildfires.
That’s why a surprise phone call, from a Canadian charity, meant so much to them.
Rahul Singh, the founder of the disaster relief and humanitarian aid organization GlobalMedic, gave High Level four brushfire skids — an innovative tool to help the frontline firefighters put out hotspots in tricky areas.
“They’re really small and they’re lighter, whereas the big fire apparatus — if we tried to get them into those situations, they’d just get stuck or bogged down. They’re not able to turn around in those tight areas,” Schmidt explained.
The brushfire skids turn almost any pickup into a firefighting vehicle.
“That tank holds water, about 1,000 litres,” Singh said.
“There’s a pump and there’s some hose and so we’re able to take any pickup truck — let’s face it Alberta has a lot of pickup trucks — and we turn that truck into a mini firetruck.”
Rick Weber came up with the idea eight years ago.
“I was looking for a product that was very mobile and easy to use for everyone — you don’t need to be a trained firefighter to run this,” the entrepreneur explained.
But selling the product wasn’t easy. It never took off — until now.
Weber’s shop in Edmonton, RacKustoms & Fab, recently received a big order for the innovative equipment from GlobalMedic.
With additional contributions from Telus and other companies, Singh is donating dozens of the skids to fire departments from coast to coast.
He decided he wanted to come up with a solution to help in the firefight, after breathing in smoke all summer in Toronto.
So far, 30 of the skids have already been deployed.
“Those have gone into British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, right here in Alberta, we’ve got some units going into Ontario, some are allocated for Nova Scotia as well,” Singh said.
“We’re trying to get them to every part of the country that faces forest fires.”
Schmidt’s fire department shared two of theirs with crews in Hay River, N.W.T., and Rainbow Lake, Alta. — northern communities that experienced significant fires this summer.
“We were watching them right on the front line, being able to deploy additional resources and protect those communities. We knew we had the right idea, and we were just so proud to be able to help,” Singh said.
Schmidt plans to deploy the remaining skids to communities as needed, saying they’ll help provide surge capacity.
“This equipment is traditionally very expensive, so having GlobalMedic donate this, that just takes a load off those small communities,” he explained.
Singh says the goal is to give away 100 brushfire skids — a dream come true for Weber.
“Hopefully these can go right across the country and we can save more people’s property and lives.”
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