“It was a good opportunity to return the favour for them”

In the midst of the firestorms that was the 2019/20 fire season, Australia’s call for international help was answered by many nations, including our experienced firefighting friends from Canada who came to our aid during the hellish crisis.

Not long after, Canadians are facing similar circumstances with hundreds of severe wildfires burning across their nation, and now many Australian firefighters are returning the favour.

Twenty-three members of the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) recently joined an Australian contingent of more than 50 fire management specialists who departed from Sydney in July for a five-week deployment assisting Canadian firefighting agencies.

Now the contingent has returned from the Northern Hemisphere, and fresh out of two-week quarantine is Orange born and raised firefighter Ash Morrow who in 2018 received the NSW Rural Fire Service Young Volunteer of the Year award at Parliament House.

With nearly eight years behind him as an RFS member, Ash has fought many fires, from the local Mount Canobolas bushfire in February 2018 to the state-wide megafires in 2019/20.

Ash’s current speciality is in airborne roles, most particularly as an Air Observer, a vital role responsible for aerial intelligence and mapping of a fire.

When the call came in to provide Canada with a helping hand, Ash said, “It was a good opportunity to return the favour for them. Canadian authorities assisted us greatly when Australia faced the devastating fires over the 2019/20 season.”

On the long flight to Canada, Ash recalls that everyone involved was “acutely aware that it was a privileged opportunity considering the restrictive travel situation we are faced with COVID-19”.

The overseas deployment would serve as a learning opportunity for Ash as well. He wanted to experience how things were done in Canada and “suffice to say it is very different to how we fight fires here in Australia”.

“The Canadian firefighters where we were located don't use fire trucks as we would see in Australia. Rather, they use copious amounts of hose, pumps and walk it all in by hand,” he explained.

“As they have an abundance of water (20 per cent of the world’s fresh water stems from Ontario in Canada), they run hose lines around the perimeter of the fire edge and use hand tools in conjunction with the hoses to extinguish any active fire.

“At first it seems ineffective to be running over five kilometres of hose around a fire, however when you are indulged into their operations, there really is no other way of completing the task,” Ash said.

Ash providing intelligence to the fire ground crews.

“I did over 100 hours of flight time in helicopters whilst I was in Canada which demonstrates how much aviation is utilised over there.”

Ash’s aviation training and experience in aerial observing made him the perfect fit for such roles whilst overseas, the first being the Sector Fire Boss and the second an Helitack Technician.

“My day would start around 7am, checking on weather conditions before flying out to the fire ground. From there we would brief the crews on their daily objectives and warn them of any impeding weather.

“Because the terrain is so remote, all fire crews camp for 14 days on the fire ground and they were only accessible via helicopter. This complicates things if anyone needs to return to base for a medical emergency.

“During the day we would stay overhead of the crews, flying to ensure the fire was behaving the way we anticipated, and if not, we would inform the crews and work our plan around it.

“It was challenging as we have to coordinate food deliveries for all persons on the ground, sometimes we had up to 50 people. We had to do rubbish removal for bears, to gear replacement and retrieval.

“All of these tasks have to be done via helicopter which takes a lot of coordination and management. To finish off, I would have an operations meeting at 8pm each night and then finish work at 9pm.

“Our shifts were 14 hours long and we would do 14 days in a row, two days off and then start again,” Ash detailed.

Quite naturally, when fighting fires across North America, special considerations for large dangerous wildlife has to be undertaken in the planning. Ash had to swap the threat of Australian venomous snakes and spiders with carnivorous Canadian bears.

“Usually they stick to themselves,” Ash said. However, there are strategies ready to go if bears became problematic for ground crews.

“Relocation of the crew, or the bear,” he said.

Ash said he “thankfully” only had a few close encounters with the creatures, saying “luckily no one was injured”.

When asked what was his most rememberable moment from this unique experience, Ash was quick to reply: “Definitely the first two weeks of the deployment. I was in a location called Bak Lake, Ontario. It is the northern-most point in Ontario you can access by road and it was extremely remote. We were based with a small team of Incident Management Personnel there.

“We were flying north to access the fires, where I was able to have an appreciation for the Canadian landscape and culture. This was definitely the most remarkable memory for me.”

Volunteer firefighter returns from helping battle Canadian fires