Original subtitles

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]

[Mike] I'm always thinking about fire.

It's an obsession, really.

I'm an ignition specialist.

My main role is to work with communities

to help provide protection from wildfire.

As firefighters,

we're usually behind the eight-ball.

We're called because there already is a fire.

Mother Nature has the jump on us...

but, you know,

we can use Mother Nature's tool of fire

for good instead of bad.

We can use fire, not just fight fire.

I'm always thinking about "Why is the fire doing this?"

Looking at the indices.

Trying to solve that riddle

of, "What is the driving force

that is making this fire happen?"

That if we can find that weak link

and break that,

we can help control this fire.

As a fire behaviour specialist,

there is the joke that goes around

that I show up and talk to the fire,

and tell it to behave itself.

Sometimes it doesn't listen.

[♪♪♪]

[Joe] One of the things

that my grandmother told me

was water is the cleanser of the human body,

and fire is the cleanser of Mother Earth.

As the songs and stories go,

the fire made sure that all was healthy

and we're always provided for by the land.

Cultural burning is the Indigenous use of fire.

It's a tool to steward the land.

It was done over thousands of years

by Indigenous people,

and the fire was used

to take care of the resources that we were interested in,

medicine, food plants,

the wetlands,

huckleberry patches, meadows,

all those areas.

[Tony] The record shows

that under Indigenous fire stewardship practices,

those systems of management

and stewarding the land

broke up the landscape

and created this patchwork on the landscape

which really allowed fires to become quite more contained.

For as long as there's been photosynthesis

on the planet,

there's been fire,

and a lot of ecosystems,

certainly in BC, but across the planet,

are adapted to fire.

They require it, actually.

There's species of plant, for example,

that only produce seeds after a fire event,

so the concept of good fire really just recognizes

that fire has always been a part of ecosystems,

will always be a part of ecosystems,

and we can use fire to reduce the risk of unwanted fire.

We'll just go, like, maybe one or two feet

from the inside here,

and then we'll just layer it... down that way.

Okay.

[Joe] By using fire to cleanse Mother Earth,

you get rid of the fuel.

If you don't have any fuel, then you don't have any fire.

Right? So if you can use fire in that way,

then you'll make your community safer

in the long run.

Looking, you know, into the future,

you won't have to bother with this

for another four years,

so, you know, for four years,

you just kinda have a little peace of mind

for the families that are here

that a fire...

you know, if it starts right here,

we'll have a chance to put it out,

'cause there won't be so much fuel.

The firekeeper

is a person that's comfortable using the fire,

being able to apply fire to the land.

You can't just let the fire take off and run, now.

You have to be able to control it

and actually stop it.

Tyler?

Don't make it too big, hey?

Springtime and fall-time is usually the best time

to do a cultural burn,

fall-time for deciduous.

We get rid of that kind of stuff, and...

all the leaves that fell

in the last three or four years,

and then, you get a...

a growth of grass coming back with, uh, mushrooms

and all kinds of different medicine

that's just waiting for fire,

and it's not killing the berry bushes,

it's actually just improving them.

[Tony] Most of the burns we do now

are in partnership with First Nations.

Most of them are informed by First Nations knowledge,

or certainly what First Nations objectives are,

what they actually want to see on their territories

in terms of bringing good fire back to their territories.

[Mike] Today's objectives?

First priority

is ecosystem restoration,

reducing fuel loading on the site,

and as well, creating a, uh...

a fuel break, potentially, for the community of Wasa,

as well as Ta Ta Creek, which is north of us.

Small communities, but still, you know,

very in need of community protection.

You're gonna be starting at the north end,

working your way south,

so two firing teams,

one going down the west, one going down the east.

Uh, east side will be numerical,

west side'll be alphabetical.

Any idea why we set it up that way?

[crew member] Less confusion?

No confusion!

[laughter]

If you're being told to go from one to two,

there's no way you can hear that on the radio

saying, "Go from A to B."

It just makes it totally cleaner.

Okay.

Once it's done, you guys can get out to the perimeter,

and I'll start filling in the middle.

[member] Yeah, sounds great.

[Mike] A lot of the fir, larch, and yellow pine

are fire-resistant.

They have very thick bark

that protects them from the heat,

and it does not damage the timber.

It's just a nice, clean undergrowth.

It just cleans that out nicely.

First Nations have a saying

that when you see the purple fuzzy flowers,

that it's time to burn.

Once this flower is fully open and the petals drop,

then that's a no-go after that.

So, just a neat little indicator

that we're in the right place at the right time,

and doing the right thing.

We have many different ignition devices

in our arsenal.

The plastic sphere dispenser,

also known as the Red Dragon,

is a device that shoots out plastic spheres

which are basically the size of a ping-pong ball

used for ignition.

[sizzling]

It's an exothermic reaction

where the potassium permanganate,

when it meets glycol, produces heat,

and will burn at up to 2,000 degrees.

The machine spits the ball out,

it drops from the helicopter onto the ground,

20 to 30 seconds later,

it will burst into flame

and burn for approximately two minutes.

It is fun to do,

you know, 'cause you're flying in the back of the helicopter,

and you have the door off, you're seat-belted in,

you've got the greatest seat in the house

for when the fire actually gets going.

The PSD is better

for when you really have to be gentle.

For example, if you're in the forest,

and it's really hot and dry conditions,

we can use the PSD

and hopefully keep the fire on the ground level.

So, you can see here,

just from the low-intensity fire

that's just come through,

all it's done is burnt off the dead grass.

Real low impact.

You know, even this isn't being killed.

[engine humming]

So, you can see from the burn here yesterday,

very low severity.

You know, it's not your typical image of a forest fire,

where everything's black from top to bottom

as far as the eye can see.

Three weeks to a month,

the burn we did here

will be green like you wouldn't believe.

We saw elk from the air,

we saw turkeys,

we saw white-tailed deer running around,

so we know they live here.

It's gonna be a much better place for them to live

once it greens back up.

It basically resets the ecosystem

to where it always likes to start from...

...and the regrowth is just amazing.

Within a few days,

you can see the grass is starting to regrow.

Within six weeks,

lush and green, blowing in the wind,

there's wildflowers,

there's insects, butterflies...

I call it my happy place.

I think people need to accept the symbiotic nature of fire.

Indigenous people have always used fire,

and we need to bring that back.

A hundred years of fire suppression

has made the forests more and more dangerous,

and climate change is making it worse.

We want to get cultural burning back on the land

so we can burn it when we want

to make the communities safe,

or else catastrophic fire will happen.

[Mike] A fire has started

in the northeast corner of the province,

a place called Donnie Creek.

It's running five to ten kilometres a day.

We're seeing flames

probably 300 feet above treetops.

It's a beast.

It's probably

somewhere in the neighbourhood of 18 hours' drive

for me to get there.

My role will be a fire behaviour analyst,

trying to look at fire behaviour

and learn its quirks

and get some sense of its personality.

When it's this big,

there's no way we're gonna win this one

in a short time frame,

but we might be able to figure out

how to control where it goes.

So we're calling in crews from all over the province

to come assist on this one.

My name's Ryan Pascal.

I've been the Salish Nation Unit Crew Supervisor

for 36 years.

The Salish Unit Crew

is an all-First Nations unit crew,

uh, the only one left in BC.

I'm 66 now.

I've been here all my life.

We're on unceded territory of the Lil'wat Nation.

Hey, guys.

[others] Boss.

What's for lunch, lunchtime?

A peanut butter and honey sandwich.

Oh yeah? [chuckles]

When they started unit crews,

they asked me if I wanted to run one,

and we got a bunch of young guys in the gymnasium,

and we started training,

and they said

it was up to me to pick the crew...

so I made sure I did not, one,

pick a family member or relative.

I just picked, you know,

I just looked at the guys, how they got along,

their work ethic.

Uh, you know, it was so good.

This picture here is of the original Salish crew,

the first 20,

and we're all wearing coveralls.

There was no reds and blue pants then,

it was all coveralls.

That's the first uniform they gave us.

I always think about the Garnet Fire in '94,

a fire that had it out for us,

and we were running from the fire

for, like, a week straight, every day.

I remember one of the crew members calling me,

he said, "Get out, the fire is coming."

So we started heading out,

and some of the other crew was farther down the cat-guard,

and I called them and said,

"We gotta get out. Go back to the landing, then."

So we were running back, and we round a corner,

and there's 30-foot flames on each side of the guard,

and we ran right through.

Made it to the landing,

and ten of my guys were missing.

I was scared.

I didn't know where they were,

and then finally, one of the Operations guys

was in a helicopter,

and he called me on the radio and said,

"Your ten guys are safe. They're in the main burn.

They're walking towards you,"

and I was standing there watching 'em walk,

walk out of the smoke, and I was crying.

And I never forget that.

It's always in the back of my mind,

the Garnet Fire.

That was terrifying.

It was at that point

I made it a point to know every family member,

because I had 20 wives thinking about them at home,

to get back to,

and I had 53 kids,

and I made it a point to know all their names.

That way... and that was always in the back of my mind.

Those are stories you never bring home,

you never tell.

Yeah.

There was 16 all-First Nations unit crews,

and now there's only one left.

I think one of the reasons

is because of the hiring process.

They made the bootcamps where you had to travel so far,

and some First Nations communities

are kind of isolated,

so I think it's got a lot to do with that.

-Looks good.

A lot of it was due to the fitness test.

When you don't pass the test, you lose your position.

It's really tough to do.

I mean, I failed it for the first time this year,

so there's a big change in the guard

on the unit crew now.

It was hard for the whole crew,

because he's been our crew supe for 30-plus years,

and I currently took the role just this past spring.

Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt] It's big boots to fill, for sure.

He's been the living legend of the Salish Unit Crew,

but it's been an easy transition

just because he's been shaping me

for the last five years.

I want to help my community grow again.

That's, like, such a big passion of mine,

is to get First Nations fire-fighting.

How long is the drive to Donnie Creek?

Uh, about 14 hours.

[Ryan] Matt is a great kid.

He's really smart.

He's a real good teacher, a way better teacher than I am,

and he can really talk.

Think that's everything.

Hope so.

[Ryan] When they were rolling out the gate,

going to a fire the first time

when I wasn't crew supe,

I thought it was really gonna bother me,

and I watched 'em ride out of the gate

on their trucks,

and I said, "It's not even bothering me."

Maybe it was time.

And I know he would keep the crew safe.

[Matt] We've been called to the Donnie Creek wildfire.

It's a huge fire, the biggest I've ever been on.

We'll be sharing a lot of workload

with all the other crews,

and if everybody's controlling their piece,

hopefully we could get this fire under control.

[Mike] In the Ignition Specialist role,

there's five or six of us provincially,

so it's a very limited asset.

I know that I'm getting

to the twilight years of my career,

so I requested

that I would like to take on an apprentice.

[Morgan] I was thrilled when he asked me

if I wanted to be his trainee for his last couple years.

I recently had a kid, and then,

some of the conversations I was having with my wife

was, you know, maybe I'll take it easy

on these next few years,

be around for the family a little bit more,

but the family supported it,

and Mike is a legend, and I just couldn't pass it up.

[Mike] We synced minds like you wouldn't believe.

It honestly has to be one of the best moves

I ever made within my career.

[news report] BC has never experienced a fire

this enormous.

[news report] The massive Donnie Creek Wildfire

continues to burn out of control.

[news report] BC has now passed a grim milestone

in its wildfires.

[news report] Evacuation orders and alerts remain in effect.

[news report] It's now grown to more than 520,000 hectares.

[news report] It's now one of the largest ever on record.

[Mike] When we got the call to go to Donnie,

I called Morgan, and I said, "Well,

time to put your big-boy pants on,

because I've decided

that you're in the front seat this year,

and I'm just gonna be in the back."

[rotors beating]

[Morgan] I've never seen any fire that large.

It was unreal.

[Mike] I've been dealing with fire so long,

I just looked at it,

and I was just in awe of Mother Nature's power.

It wants to do what it wants to do,

and it's very challenging

for us to try and corral it

in that sort of fire behaviour...

'cause if those fire conditions went running that aggressively,

there's virtually nothing we can do.

There is no air tanker in the world

that's big enough to put that out.

[Morgan] The perimeter of the fire

is over 800 kilometres.

We don't even have enough resources

to get all the way around something like that,

much less suppress the entire fire,

so we're prioritizing areas of the fire

where we can have success.

It's shifting your mind,

knowing that we're not going to put this fire out,

and we just have to try to manage it the best we can.

[Mike] We gotta try and lay down a line of fire

that connects these two points.

The distance from here all the way around to here

is 50 kilometres.

We wanna try and prevent the fire

from progressing south,

where most of the valleys are that are under threat,

so we're gonna undertake what we call

"ignition missions."

The objective is to find something

we can tie off from a river,

a highway that we can burn off from.

We will then lay fire on that line

to get it to go back into the existing wildfire.

It's getting dark, and we can't fly at night,

so we're gonna send in a ground crew

to do some burning overnight,

so that when morning comes,

we should be ready for the big burn tomorrow.

This is Salish One.

We're just arriving at the site now,

and we'll be burning in about 30 minutes.

We showed up at the fire,

and we recognized what we needed to burn.

We had to figure out our A to B,

so where we're gonna start

and where we're gonna end for this burn.

Head towards the road,

and then turn into the next field

heading downhill.

[Matt] Our first task is to protect

some oil and gas infrastructure

by burning the fuel that's around it.

We're pushing in a guard from the top here,

it's working down.

Uh, it's a couple spots there across their guard,

as well, we're gonna try to capture and burn off.

[Matt] I love what I get to do.

The crew is a family,

and we also have families from the communities

on the crew as well,

my brother, three of my cousins,

I take their safety very important.

The long pink you have.

We were called in to use drip torches

because it's more precise and you have more control

than, say, something like a heli-torch,

just dropping flames from above.

You can't use the helicopters at night, anyways.

Nighttime's a great opportunity,

because the heat's down, the winds are usually shifted,

so right now, it's in our favour.

[radio crackles]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Matt] Okay, copy.

[Matt] It's always a little challenging

working in the dark.

You're walking on uneven ground,

and it's dark, but the fire's bright,

so you can't see where you're going.

It's dangerous work.

It is 3:40 a.m. right now.

We are burning off

and thickening the guard for the morning shift.

It's looking sweet.

I think we'll be giving them good product,

so, happy with that.

Through my career,

I used to struggle quite hard, right,

with any structure I lost,

or any ground that you start to lose,

but then I noticed if I was too emotional,

I stopped making the proper calls,

and the proper call's always gonna be

pull my guys out if it's not safe to action.

We don't have to win every battle,

but we always have to make it home at night,

so I just had to let the stress of a little bit of loss

roll off my shoulders,

and then I could make proper judgement calls again.

Yeah, go ahead.

Just behind the cat there.

We had to bring in a camp

due to the level of activity here.

We have all our facilities here.

We have showers.

We have accommodation trailers,

the kitchen trailer, the catering staff.

We also have office trailers, I.T. trailers...

A lot of the time, we might be moving camps

from one fire directly into another fire,

especially in years where there's fires

here, there, and everywhere.

The camp comes down, and three days later,

it's up and running in another location.

[Morgan] So, we decided to go with the heli-torch

on this burn,

because it's a larger ignition

so it's for a really quick ignition.

It's to get the intensities up high

so you have some control,

so it's good in the boreal fuel types

and the dense black spruce stands.

[Mike] It is a product

you probably do not wanna get on your skin.

We have goggles. We have aprons.

Lots and lots of safety issues around doing this sort of stuff.

This thing is gonna be leap-frogging ahead of us

so that it's nowhere near where we're burning.

The heli-torch is inherently dangerous

just because the fact

you have a 45-gallon drum of fuel

hanging below a helicopter.

It's inherently risky,

but everything we do

is careful and methodical,

and that's how we can get this done

without having any injuries.

[Morgan] We'll have a three-person mixing crew

that will fuel up the 45-gallon drums, uh,

mix in the gelling agents...

...hook up the helicopter

as it goes to do its next mission.

It's a pretty small crew for such a big mission.

[Mike] We only burn

when the weather conditions are just right,

so we have to rely heavily

on our weather forecasters and their intel

before we start doing anything large.

I try to have a good understanding

of what they're doing, what they're trying to do,

what their challenges are of the day,

so I can try to give them the information

that will help them make decisions.

We're gonna bring some cloud

into the north third of our region

by the end of the day today,

but for the most part, think about

just one more very hot and very dry day.

So when we look closely on here,

we can see that these points here,

where we have this streamer of smoke coming off,

those are the fires that we have in our region.

I try to keep the people in the Ops seat

up to date

with the freshest weather information

through the day...

We got Tabernacle, ridge top...

-Yeah. -...gusting 46.

Okay.

[Jesse] ...to confirm whether it's following the story

that I told them in the morning.

So far, the winds are not as strong

as I thought they were gonna be.

Thank god. [laughing]

Yeah, I love this one.

It's just an old-school black-and-white weather chart.

When folks ask me,

"What do you think about this,"

like, "flashy, colourful weather loop?"

I say, "Well, I kinda like this one, still, better."

All the little squiggles tell a story

that help me get a better idea of what is gonna happen.

Every day is a puzzle...

a long series of mistakes and successes.

[laughing]

Hey, Len, am I stealing somebody's lunch?

Just peanut butter?

-Oh, that is mine. Oh, yeah! -[laughter]

'Cause it got my marmalade on it.

Oh, my god.

I would've been gone.

Oh, my god.

I took some marmalade from the A&W.

[laughing]

The fire doesn't wait for us, so...

we just, yeah, make it and go when we can.

I like to go heavy on the peanut butter,

because it's the delicious part.

Okay, I think it's safe to go ahead of me

now that all the spiderwebs are gone.

[laughter]

[Matt] It's been a lot of hard, long days.

We're tired, but we're happy.

Like, we're working together very well.

It's been really good.

Yeah, for sure.

[Mike] The drum's suspended under the helicopter,

and the pilot has control of the trigger,

and when we're talking to him on the radio,

we'll tell him when to drop and when not to.

Slow down a little bit.

[Mike] Every one of these heli-torches

is homemade.

Every of them's absolutely different.

Helicopter geniuses, pilots and engineers,

they build them in the hangars over the winter months.

We were a kilometre away,

you could already feel the radiant heat from it

coming through the bubble of the helicopter.

We'll get in-drafting of 60, 70 kilometres an hour

from that fire sucking in so much oxygen,

and once we got close,

we could actually feel the fire in-drafting,

and the pilot told us

he could feel the helicopter being sucked in.

-Yep. -That's it.

[Mike] New pilots coming in,

a lot of them don't want to be doing heli-torching,

and it is a dying art in the aviation industry,

'cause it's pretty risky

when you have a 45-gallon drum of gasoline

hanging under the helicopter.

[Morgan] Flying in those conditions,

it can be really unnerving,

but I have a lot of trust and faith

in the pilots that we're flying with.

They're very experienced.

If they're uncomfortable with it,

they're not gonna fly in it,

as well as, you know, with Mike and myself,

one "no" is a no-go,

so although it's unnerving,

we're not putting ourselves in any unnecessary danger.

You're always thinking of,

"Okay, if something goes wrong here,

like, what are our options?"

[Mike] We're running parallel to the road here

all the way down to the end.

Everything's burning quite nicely.

It's, um, in-drafting into the main body of the fire.

I was building confidence as I was going through the burn.

Good work.

[Morgan] If I started, you know, to doubt myself,

or question what I was doing, if I was doing the right thing,

I would just look in the back seat,

and Mike would give me a nod.

It'd have been a totally different experience for me

if Mike was not sitting in the back seat.

[Morgan] Yeah.

[Mike] We had two helicopters staged there,

and they both had heli-torches attached.

We had a three-person ground crew

assisting us with the trailer that would run down the road,

and when the pilot

was getting close to being empty,

he would tell us to mix another barrel.

[Mike] The crew would mix it.

We'd come in with the helicopter,

they'd switch the full out for the empty.

One, two, three!

Open!

[Mike] The crew would run down the road further.

He would keep burning,

and they would just hop-scotch along.

[Mike] Unfortunately,

I don't believe the public has a real good idea

of what we're doing,

and we get a lot of people reacting

that, "Oh, my gosh,

you're gonna destroy the forest, take out towns."

That sort of stuff, that... is untrue.

There was video produced online of myself and Morgan

doing aerial ignitions in the Donnie Creek Wildfire,

and I actually had people accusing me

of being an international terrorist

for destroying Canada's forests...

...when, in fact,

we're using fire to help control wildfire.

[Matt] So, the Salish Crew

got split into different segments today,

so they have a couple different objectives.

We got some people chasing the spots,

some people, um,

checking our last burn line from last night,

making sure that held.

Go for Delta 1.

[Len] Well, we've run into a bit of a problem.

Come on!

That's not going anywhere.

[Len] Unfortunately, we can't get out of this,

we're stuck, so, we have to go, uh,

take all our gear off,

and go the rest of the way on foot

and get to the spot.

Problem is, we got about 40 lengths of hose to haul in,

so, uh, that's gonna be a bit of a workout.

[Matt] Rex is our newest and youngest recruit.

Picked him up this spring.

Really happy with him.

He's really hard-working and really eager.

The biggest piece for me, that warms my heart,

is it's really exciting

to see new generations coming into wildfire,

new First Nations stepping up

and becoming part of the unit crew.

Really proud of Rex.

[Len] How strong are your legs, Rex?

[Rex] Stronger than my arms.

Then we'll see, boy.

[Matt] First Nations have been, like,

taking care of these lands forever.

-Okay, uh, send the water!

BC is built on First Nations territory,

so trying to get the people back into the forest

is a very important thing,

and they'll be protecting their own territory.

[Len] Okay, we've reached the spot,

but it's, uh, moving pretty fast,

but we've got the hose on it.

[Matt] The original Salish, we pretty much

created the standard that BC Wildfire follows now,

because they're so tight-knit,

they have such a high standard, they knew what to do.

They dialed in what works, what doesn't,

and what was safe,

and they pushed it forward

for almost all crews to follow after that.

It's been pretty sweet.

We want to get their knowledge, so that way,

we can continue fighting fires how they fought fire.

If we have to, we can just start cleaning up that one.

-Yep, 100%. -Okay.

I'm just hanging on to,

everybody's path moved on, eh?

Ryan's gone. Reno's gone.

It's... but I got all the young guys now

help do the same thing I enjoyed for 30 years.

[Matt] When you're starting to age out,

it gets harder and harder

for older people and smaller people.

Salish Unit Crew

were probably the shortest crew overall

in the province.

Unit crews are usually 220-pound-plus guys,

and Salish,

we're probably averaged at about 5'9",

'cause we're St'át'imc.

So, there's a fun story.

Chilcotins and St'át'imc

used to be warring and everything.

Um, Chilcotins are a lot taller

than, uh, Líl'wat or St'át'imc Nation,

and that's because they have shorter trees,

so up on the plateau,

they have to peek over the trees,

so they grew,

while, uh, St'át'imc has the big trees.

We had to bend under their branches and everything,

and we shrunk,

so that's why we got

the shortest crew in the province.

The wind's in our favour right now,

if it doesn't go that way.

[Mike] Everything was going well,

and all of a sudden...

It looks like the heli-torch stopped working.

I think we need to head back to the airstrip

to have a look at it.

[Mike] ...the second helicopter had a malfunction with it...

This one's done until I, uh, put a new motor in.

That motor just shouldn't be that tight.

...and the machine went unserviceable for the day,

so that puts the pressure back on the original pilot,

that he's gotta carry us all day long.

[Morgan] About 15, 20 minutes later...

Oh, no!

...our second heli-torch malfunctioned.

It stopped igniting the, uh, jelly fuels.

[Mike] And in that situation,

the pilot who built it stripped the thing down.

He wasn't sure

if he was gonna fix the machine,

so that was a little bit unnerving,

because we didn't have another heli-torch

so that we could continue lighting that line.

'Cause, if not,

we've got day one over on the left side,

and we're on the east side,

and we're trying to join them together.

If we don't join them,

then we're opening ourselves up for a real bad scenario,

because if the wind does shift,

it's got a hole to go through, totally unprotected.

[Morgan] It was a very stressful time.

We did have quite a bit of fire on the landscape

that wasn't secured

or checked into another control line,

so there was stress there.

Like, "Okay, now what are we gonna do?"

You know, but we're trying to tie in...

[Morgan] We're trying to come up

with some contingency plans.

It's a pretty major problem.

[Len] I'm not even gonna watch, Rex!

[laughs] I know, right?

[Len] Be careful with that knife.

[Rex chuckles]

[Matt] When I first started in 2013,

wildfires were mean still,

but if you got onto the big fire,

that's "the big fire for the season" type thing,

and, uh, nowadays,

every fire's the big fire of the season

compared to what it used to be.

When I first joined,

I had a 45-day fire season, and then, years like this year,

we've probably seen people

hit 100 days this year, type thing,

so we've been seeing a lot more burnout,

is what everybody's been calling it.

It's hard on the guys to be away from their families

for 100 days out of the year.

I got an anniversary coming up.

-When's yours? -How many years on that?

On the 20th.

-Of this month? -Of this month.

-Mm. -Our 21st wedding anniversary.

-Whoo! -[Len chuckles]

-Attaboy. -Yeah.

You know, missing another one.

I stay in contact with her every day,

and let her know, assure her that everything's okay.

No matter what time it is, when I call her,

if it's 5:30 in the morning,

she doesn't care, as long as I call.

The passion keeps me going.

We're saving stuff.

When I first started, there was no cellphones,

and now everybody's got a cellphone,

and everybody's on that,

whatever they call, Facebook and that, and...

and nowadays, they-they're talking every night

with their families,

so I imagine that makes it easier,

but they're out there every deployment.

[Len] But it does get lonely, and, uh, roads get long.

Right here!

But, I only got, what,

ten more years to go, and then I can retire?

[laughing]

[helicopter overhead]

[Mike] Luckily, the pilot had the spare parts.

He put it in, we put it all back together,

and it worked like a dream,

and we were able to continue and finish that mission.

It was a very satisfying feeling,

the two lines of fire joining together,

and he said, "Well,

I got about ten gallons left in my barrel.

We're done."

[Matt] Okay, guys!

Let's pack it up. We're outta here.

[Ryan] For the Salish crew, uh,

I think they're in a good place.

They got a lot of young guys that are really eager,

in good shape,

have no problem with the fit test.

Now I'm a First Nations coordinator.

I travel around

recruiting First Nations for unit crews.

I enjoy seeing the young kids coming on,

and I enjoy helping them out.

Who knows the hazards of, uh, tripping hazards?

[Ryan] This year,

because Salish has seven openings,

which is rare,

we had a First Nations bootcamp.

It was great to see them come out of their shell

after the first day,

and it was, it was something to see,

I was really happy with it.

Okay, let's start following Stevie up!

All right.

[Ryan] We're gonna have six of them come on

from the bootcamp

that pass the fitness test, pass the written test,

and they all did great.

I wished I could take them all.

I think Salish is in a good place right now.

I'm gonna retire next year,

and it's gonna be hard to leave this place.

[Morgan] You're seeing the highway stay open

or the critical infrastructure,

um, still standing at the end of the day,

and it-it's very rewarding.

[Mike] It'll eventually get put out

by the snow and the rains this winter,

and next year, it will start to heal itself,

and things will start to regrow.

Morgan did incredibly well.

He's gonna be...

probably one of the best prescribed burners

and ignition specialists in the country.

He's gonna be a superstar.

[Morgan] We've talked about when I get in a jam,

I'll be calling Mike, and I have Mike on speed-dial,

and he said he'll be there to answer the phone.

He'll be missed.

I've loved doing this job.

I'm always thinking,

"If I had this mountain, and if I had a fire,

where would I be actioning it?"

Yeah, once fire's in your head, you can't get it out.

I think there's a lot of firefighters out there

that truly become addicted to putting out fire.

You really come to actually love it.

You love the smell of it,

you love the look of it, and you love to beat it out,

but there's just days where,

no matter where you look on the landscape,

fire's doing its thing,

and Mother Nature is just in total control.

Fire's always been the centre of my life,

and being on the crew is the best job that I've had,

but it's interesting to see the awareness

that the only way to stop a lot of these fires

is to have other fires on the landscape.

It's certainly a shift in the mentality on our end.

I think people are realizing that what we've done in the past

is kinda biting us in the butt right now.

Okay, we gotta get going. Let's go, guys.

I really do enjoy being out there.

It's exciting,

and you're with really good people,

but I also wanna be a part

of bringing back good fire on the landscape.

Like, how can we, like, shift our mindset

that this isn't such a bad thing?

We can use it for bettering the ecosystems.

I do love the job itself.

It's just so meaningful.

We want to do a good job,

and just do what we can for BC,

and just make sure that everybody is safe.

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]