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John Hawkins
Timo Bierlin, of Invercargill, will be based at Fort Smith in Canada’s Northwest Territories during his two-week deployment.
Timo Bierlin is joining a group of firefighters heading to help battle the ongoing wildfires in Canada.
The group manager for Fire and Emergency Southland is part of New Zealand’s fifth deployment to the wildfires, flying out of Auckland on Saturday.
On this occasion the contingent was made up of fire and emergency and forestry company specialist personnel.
“It’s my first time to Canada; I went to Australia for bushfires a couple of times, but North America will be different to Australia,” Bierlin said.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
The deployment, named Echo Deployment, consisted of two divisional supervisors, two heavy equipment group supervisors, one of them Bierlin, an air operations branch director, a helicopter coordinator and an area representative.
Maxar Technologies/AP
Smoke from recent wildfires covers Yellowknife, Northwest Territories Canada.
Smith was heading for the town of Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories adjacent to the Alberta border.
On Thursday, a State of Local Emergency was extended to ensure the town could exercise precautionary practices and acquire equipment and resources needed to keep it safe from the surrounding wildfires.
The extension was until September 1, and was being updated each week while the wildfire incident continued.
“In my role as heavy equipment supervisor I’ll be basically looking after all the excavators and machinery and making use the machines are used in a safe and effective way. It will be full-on.”
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The wildfires started in March and intensified in June affecting all 13 Canadian territories and provinces.
Firefighters from Australia, United States, South Africa, France, Mexico, Costa Rica and Brazil had assisted.
A total of 92 New Zealand firefighters from around the country have been sent to Canada, mostly undertaking arduous firefighting.
With three days travel required both to and from Fort Smith, Bierlin would spend 14 days in the field.
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