Members of the Canadian Armed Forces assist with mop-up operations near Oliver (photo courtesy of the Canadian Armed Forces)

By Liam Verster

Deployed at White Rock Lake Saturday

Canadian Armed Forces personnel coming to Vernon to support wildfire operations

Aug 26, 2021 | 3:15 PM

The Canadian Armed Forces will be moving about 80 personnel to Vernon on Friday afternoon to support operations at the White Rock Lake wildfire.

The military members are being moved in a convoy from Oliver, where they had been supporting the B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS) at the Thomas Creek and Nk’Mip Creek fires.

The convoy will consist of a number of Medium Support Vehicles transporting equipment in Sea-Containers, Light Utility Vehicles or G-Wagons, and rented white F-350s which make up the bulk of the fleet troops have been using to access the fires lines.

The convoy will leave Oliver at about 1 p.m. and arrive in Vernon at about 4 p.m. The public is advised to be patient and give them space as their convoy will be large and could result in some traffic congestion at times.

“The way that the convoy works is we have all the vehicles split into four groups, so that all the groups have to stay together and that just makes sure that if there is a problem one, we don’t stop the whole convoy, just stop the one packet, the one grouping of vehicles, and the rest will continue,” said Cpt. Jamie Blois with the Land Task Force.

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“We don’t anticipate any problems. All the vehicles are well maintained and we have people dedicated to making sure they’re in good operating order. We’ll have them fueled up, so it should just be a smooth one shot transition all the way up the highway.”

The troops consist of about 60 combat engineers who will work directly with BCWS in fighting the fire. The rest are support personnel who work in the kitchen, laundry or other services.

The military personnel will be stationed at the Vernon Cadet Training Centre, and from there will be deployed to assist with firefighting operations through mop-up work at locations where the fire has already moved through.

“We’re always with a person from B.C. Wildfire Services. They’re the Type 1 firefighters and they are really experts,” said Blois.

“We’re just supplementing, we just come up to do the grunt work: we go through the burnt areas and we dig up the hot spots. If there’s roots and stuff, we’ll dig them up and we’ll douse them down with water and cool them off. We’ll turn over logs and make sure there’s a complete extinguish of the fire. That ensures that there are no more flare ups and no further spread.”

The military personnel will also be there to support controlled ignitions and mop up after that work is done, as well as conduct patrols of the areas to monitor for any fire growth, which they would report back to BCWS.

It’s expected that the troops will be out supporting the BCWS as early as Saturday morning.