Saskatchewan residents received a flyer in the mail recently from the SGEU (Saskatchewan Government Employees Union). It is a call for an independent, public review – and changes – needed to keep northern families and communities safe. The flyer in your mailbox outlined huge failings throughout the 2015 wildfire season.
It came with the urgent call for all SK residents to contact Minister of Environment, Herb Cox and Minister Responsible for First Nations, Métis and Northern Affairs, Jim Reiter and urged us to tell the government we need: a substantial increase in budget, resources and firefighters and an independent, public review of the wildfire crisis of 2015.
But there's more you need to know about the management of these wildfires.
The flier touches on the shortage of equipment. The truth is the equipment shortage includes the supply of heavy equipment, which is normally provided by independent contractors. What the public doesn't know is that many of those contractors who have faithfully supplied equipment and operators for wildfires in Saskatchewan every year have made the decision not to do so anymore. After the 2015 season, there may be many more. Now there's plenty of equipment operators happy to take their place, however, many have never fought a fire. The contractors we are losing are ones with years, even decades, of front line fire fighting experience. No amount of last minute training will replace that.
So why are these operators opting out of listing their equipment for the wildfire season?
For some it's the lack of organization and poor communication within the different levels of the Ministry and on the front lines. This effects their work and, in some instances, puts them at risk on the front lines. Imagine being the dozer operator that has to quickly make a clearing in hopes of saving his equipment, as he is about to be airlifted out of a fire that has turned on him. Imagine being in front line fire camp and getting garbled messages after the bosses have already left, only to get clarity when it is too late to leave and the smoke is too bad to get airlifted out. Try spending the night inside your equipment, watching a fire burning on all sides of you, even over you. Watch it take out camp tents and equipment. As you spend the night wondering if you will make it, you can't also help but wonder what those bosses knew when they fled camp well before warning you properly. 
Try spending hours working in the morning with no crews because they had to be transported in every day and some days never showed up until 9 or ten in the morning. Try being left behind as crews pack it in for the day and left alone with your water truck, with no radio in a situation so bad that you have to water down your own path just to get out. Or how about working on your own while you wait for a replacement crew because one person made a mistake so your whole crew got sent home for the rest of the season.
Not all the problems are on the front line though, some of the experienced contractors may not be available on for the 2016 wildfire season if problems with the paperwork processing isn't addressed.
Starting before even going to any fires, contractors had problems with paperwork being lost. Small potatoes, but those problems were an indication of how the rest of the paperwork processing was going to go. After weeks on fires, contractors started receiving some payments. These were sporadic at best. Keep in mind they have set aside other work to fight these fires. No, they are not volunteers, they do get paid, eventually. Some contractors have had to wait up 3 - 4 months for final payments. The wait for payments is bad enough, but the real frustration comes in when they try to find out what's taking so long. That's where the typical bureaucratic bull steps in. They would call and get the run around, "oh it's not in my office, I don't know where it is, try calling so-and-so".And the inconsistencies between contractors was beyond frustrating. Some had little delay in their payments, some waited months. Some got paid for transporting their fellow operators back and forth daily, from camps a 300 km round trip from the fire line, some didn't, it depended what fire base you worked out of.
Equipment rates, for the most part where pretty much on par with the regular rates of the different types of equipment, but the government found ways to squeeze back some of that with huge surcharges to use ministry supplied fuel. Rather than simply recording usage and billing back the contractors, a large amount was taken off per hour if they chose to have fuel supplied by the government. This essentially amounted to the ministry making a profit from the cost of fuel used by the equipment operators. That's if they had fuel available, again that was sporadic.
The disorganized use of resources was hard to swallow.
For the cost of one helicopter in a day, they could have over 10 dozers and other equipment on the ground working the fire, which will do more than one helicopter will. Helicopters used to fly food into firefighters instead of setting up a nearby temporary camp.
Another thing the flier doesn't tell you is about the ground crews. These men and women are the front line, working alongside the equipment operators. For this dangerous job, they got minimum wage. The work was not EI insurable, so they didn't even get that bonus. While their meals and accommodations are provided, they have to order sundries through the government "store", for which they were charged ridiculous prices. Clean dry socks may be taken for granted at home, but on the fire line they are an important necessity. They even needed to supply their own boots. Another aspect not covered in the flier was the ridiculous need to keep fire details top secret.
While there was a public web site for general details, it failed to provide what people where really looking for and needing. There was no place to go, to get up to date details on the fire that was creeping up to your back door. Uncounted resources where wasted barricading people from returning to evacuated regions, people who were only trying to get home and check on their properties because they where totally left in the cold when it came to updates. Some say that would be just to difficult to do, but BC doesn't seem to have any trouble doing it on their wildfire update web site.The process for evacuations was disorganized in some areas too. One person 1-1/2 miles from a fire doesn't even get a visit from EMO, while others 10-15 miles from it get ordered to evacuate.
Who's to blame?
But before you go pointing fingers at the firebase management, Prince Albert office or any other person down the chain of command, understand that the source of all these problems comes from up high. It's an accumulation of policies and actions taken by the people at the top, requiring those down the line to struggle to make the resources available to them work. While there may be some middle management that contributed to the disorganization, the majority of the problem is right at the top.Lack of funding, direction and, in many cases, the sheer inability to make decisions right there on the front line by those who know what they are facing and have the years of experience to make the right decisions. Lack of a proper channel for communications.
The Ministry and it's representatives seemed more interested in the photo-ops than they did in attacking these wildfires in an organized, efficient manner.
What can the people of Saskatchewan do about this?
Voice your concerns!Tell government we need:
• a substantial increase in budget, resources and firefighters
• an independent, public review of the wildfire crisis of 2015
Contact:
Minister of Environment - Herb Coxenv.minister@gov.sk.ca or 1 (306) 787-0393
Minister Responsible for First Nations, Métis and Northern Affairs Jim Reiter
minister.gr@gov.sk.ca or 1 (306) 787-6100
Here is a link to the SGEU flier that was received in the mail: Wildfire Crisis 2015
