With Australia experiencing a severe and early bushfire season Ontario and Canada are providing help.
Isabelle Chenard of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry tells us there are three ministry staff ‘down-under’ complimenting a contingent of 21 Canadian firefighters. They will be gone for a deployment of 38 days. She adds the ministry trio “includes one operations section chief and two planning section chiefs that will be joining incident management teams.”
Chenard says Australian officials requested our help noting that country has helped us out at least four times since 2015 with our forest firefighting efforts.
A lifelong resident of Sydney says they have never seen the smoke as bad as it has been noting you cannot even “see buildings 200 metres away.” They add the smoke is so thick it makes you want to cough all the time bemoaning, “this is only the start of our summer.”
