OLDS — Five Olds firefighters and one of their pieces of equipment did their part last week to battle the Sturgeon County wildfire.
All are safely back home and there are no plans to send others, Olds Fire Department Chief Justin Andrew says.
The fire located about 70 kilometres north of Edmonton, broke out about two weeks ago and has covered more than 3,200 hectares of land. The fire is said to have been caused by an ATV travelling in the area.
Andrew says on May 8, the Provincial Operations Centre of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency asked the Olds Fire Department (OFD) for support to battle the blaze near Redwater, about 52 kilometres north of Edmonton.
In total, five firefighters responded.
In an email, Andrew said the crew “immediately went to work through the first night and continued working the night shift of operations straight through until yesterday morning (May 14).”
After a mandatory rest period, they returned to Olds May 14 at about 7 p.m. (two of the initial responding members were changed out on May 12).
Andrew said none of the crew suffered any injuries or adverse occurrences while deployed.
The firefighters weren’t all that the OFD sent up to battle the fire.
“We offered our Type 6 wildland apparatus which is a 3/4ton truck that was donated to us by Plains Midstream LLC Canada last year for exactly this purpose,” Andrew wrote.
“There are currently no other Olds resources operating anywhere outside of Olds and no plans to change that in the foreseeable future, based on the change in weather and recent rainfall,” he wrote.
“We are grateful to the families and employers of our members who graciously allowed their people to respond to help another community.”
