Wildland firefighters work to extinguish embers in a forested area of Shining Bank, Alta., on May 19, 2023.JEN OSBORNE/The New York Times News Service
Riley Moskaluk, 29, a veteran wildland firefighter, says fire in a dry forest can turn on you in mere seconds, with just one tree’s flames suddenly leaping from treetop to treetop, creating a blazing wall of heat.
While facing the Chuckegg Creek fire in May, 2019, just outside the evacuated High Level, Alta., he suddenly saw a single tree consumed by flames and started to run. Minutes later, behind him, a wide swath of woods had turned into a 25-metre high inferno.
“One tree candled and it rained embers on me, so I ran out to the power line,” Mr. Moskaluk said in a phone interview from Terrace, B.C. “And by the time I had run from the power line to the highway, so maybe 40 or 50 metres, the entire piece of probably about 50 metres long by 20 metres deep of forest was fully engulfed.”
The dangers faced by people like Mr. Moskaluk are only set to increase. Climate change is expected to keep Canada’s forests drier, and more ready to burn, than in decades past, meaning more fires that burn more intensely. Experts say last year’s season, which scorched a record 18.5 million hectares across Canada, and blanketed big cities such as Toronto and Ottawa with acrid smoke, was a stark warning. And this year’s wildfire season has already begun.
Yet provinces still staff their forest firefighting services mostly with seasonal, lower-paid students, who mostly make between $22 and $28 an hour, many with limited experience. This, firefighters and their union leaders say, needs to change to meet the new supercharged threat.
While seasonal workers will always have a role, critics say the current system means experienced firefighters are increasingly less likely to return season after season, especially with the social isolation and other rigorous demands of the job. As a result, crews are more likely to be staffed by rookies or headed by inexperienced crew leaders, who are responsible for deciding both how to battle the flames, and for keeping their fellow firefighters safe.
John Vaillant, the Vancouver-based author whose Fire Weather examines the devastating 2016 Fort McMurray, Alta., fire and warns climate change will bring more such disasters, said governments have not caught up to the reality that today’s forest fires cannot be battled with the same staff and methods as decades ago.
“What’s happening is a system and an organization that is not ready for the pressures climate change is exerting upon it,” he said in an interview. “The fire regime is changing literally before our eyes.… It’s not the same animal that it was in 1990.”
Noah Freedman, an Ontario wildland fire crew leader who is vice-president of Local 703 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said a crew leader with a few years’ experience in Ontario makes about $24,000 for a season in base pay. In last year’s busy summer, he made about $40,000 with overtime, before taxes.
While students can go back to school, for veteran crew members, finding off-season jobs is difficult. Some go on employment insurance. Others quit when they realize raising a family is next to impossible with this job. Mr. Freedman said veteran firefighters have said for years that better pay and more permanent staff positions are needed, so the job can actually become a career for more people.
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry has offered up to $5,000 in extra pay this year, and is hiring 100 permanent staff. The province has also announced a plan to offer wildland firefighters the same coverage as regular firefighters if they develop cancer, heart problems or post-traumatic stress disorder. So far this season, Ontario says it has has recruited more than 600 wildland firefighters, within what it says is its target range of 400 to 800.
Firefighters with the British Columbia Wildfire Service Titan unit crew watch as a helicopter drops water on the southeastern flank of the Bush Creek wildfire in Turtle Valley after it destroyed homes and other structures in multiple communities in the North Shuswap region of B.C. on Aug. 23, 2023.JESSE WINTER/Reuters
But Mr. Freedman said the province actually needs a full complement of 800, made up of 200 four-person crews. He also said crews, which are helicoptered into hotspots, now often need to have five members because of the rookies who require more help and on-the-job training.
“You can’t comprehend having to literally train somebody how to do their job, during the job, when that job is fighting a wildfire,” Mr. Freedman said.
It’s a similar story in Alberta and Quebec, where union leaders say wildland firefighters battle blazes despite low pay and dangerous conditions, and that high turnover rates are a problem.
Quebec’s Société de protection des forêts contre le feu (SOPFEU) says it has added 50 people to its workforce, which will total 280 this year, and that it has hired all of the needed firefighters for this season.
The Alberta government says it is on track to have 1,000 wildland firefighters – 100 more than last season – in place by mid-May.
But James Gault, executive vice-president of the Alberta Union of Public Employees, said even if the government hits this goal it still faces a turnover rate of more than 50 per cent, and the problems that come with that.
“We have a lot of people with two years’ experience who are now leading brand new people into these fires in crews of 20,” he said.
Some union leaders point to British Columbia as a model to emulate, saying it has made changes that have resulted in better pay and a higher ratio of permanent to seasonal staff. The B.C. government says it attracted 2,000 applicants this year, the most in a decade and double the number than in 2023.
With 1,300 seasonal staff, the province will have more “initial attack crews” than last year, and 500 permanent staff, a number that has gone up 55 per cent since 2021.
Paul Finch, treasurer of the B.C. General Employees’ Union, said more needs to be done, as the province still suffers from a retention problem. Only seven of the 261 crew leaders working last year had more than three years of experience making real-time decisions at the edge of the fire line, he said.
“This is not a sustainable system,” Mr. Finch said.
It was B.C.’s change of approach that led Mr. Moskaluk to leave his home province of Alberta and take his wildfire experience, dating back to 2016, and move farther west. He is now in his third year with B.C.’s wildfire service, and he says not only is the pay better – he said he makes around $30 an hour now – but there is the potential path in B.C. to a permanent, full-time gig.
Mr. Moskaluk says he cannot understand how governments in Alberta and other provinces have not acted to ensure the people fighting forest fires are paid enough so that those with years of expertise stick around.
“I can’t for the life of me fathom how it’s even a debate still, at this point – that it’s not immediately obvious that there need to be large changes made, and quickly.”
With files from Xiao Xu and Mike Hager