Bonnyville Regional Fire Authority (BRFA) Chief, Brian McEvoy, along with Cold Lake Fire Rescue (CLFR) Chief, Jeff Fallow, say the departments have crews in Fort McMurray assisting in the firefighting efforts and are on standby with more resources, should they be needed.

“It is a fluid situation and the Province is putting in as much resources as are available,” McEvoy says the plan could change at any time and Bonnyville is on standby to provide resources or even officially house evacuees for the Province. “They keep expanding as time goes on.”

The crews from CLFR are, “working the front lines,” says Chief Fallow. “We have two crews up there, the second crew arrived last evening, around 10:00. They were deployed out into the community. Our crew that went before had a little shut-eye, about two hours, then were back at it this morning.” Fallows doesn’t have specific as to where in the city or specific firefighting efforts the crews are involved in, he’s more concerned his team is looked after, getting fed, and safe. “Letting them know if they need anything back home, or if they’re families need anything, we’ll look after that.”

BRFA has deployed one truck with five men to Fort McMurray, Chief McEvoy says the plan is to switch them out with another ccrew shortly, “we are getting ready to replace the resources that we have up there, if necessary. There’s meeting today with our guys up there with the incident command centre to determine how long they’re going to need resources from us. If it stretches beyond tomorrow, we will be replacing our firefighters with fresh firefighters.

“It is what you’ve seen on TV, unfortunately.” Fallow says when first called on the department was given an approximate of 3-7 days that they would be up north, “if we have to go longer than the weekend, we will be switching out the crews; probably Sunday or Saturday afternoon. Some of them took leave from their places of employment to go, we want to make sure we don’t run them out. We have 30 guys that wanted to go, so no shortage there.”

Aside from one paid CLFR fighter, the rest of the firefighters from both communities are volunteers. Both department appreciate the understanding nature of the fighter’s employers in allowing these firefighters leave from work to help with the situation.