Sandi Krasowski
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Chronicle-Journal
With more than 180 wildfires burning in Northern Ontario as of Thursday, residents are in the hands of provincial and federal governments working together to provide what is needed to mitigate the fires and keep people and property safe.
“We are operating at a state of emergency level with or without a declaration,” said Kevin Holland, MPP for the Thunder Bay-Atikokan riding.
“It’s the actions that we’re putting on the ground and every available resource we have is out. We’ve got assistance from other jurisdictions and we have more help coming in. We have the ability and we’re pulling out all the stops to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect properties and communities.”
Holland explained that when it comes to fires, flooding, weather events, or any emergency, communities don’t have to declare a state of emergency because both government levels have removed barriers, making funding, equipment and manpower easily and instantly accessible.
“All the province requires a community to do is for either the clerk or the head of council to call the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre, tell them about the situation and that they will need their support, and then the process is activated,” he said.
Holland worries that there’s been a lot of missing or misinformation about what the province is doing to help mitigate the fire situation.
“We have been in constant contact with the federal government since the situation exploded over the last couple of days,” he said. “We got all the resources out there that we can to deal with the situation, and if we’re going to need that extra support by calling in resources from across Canada, we can do that through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. We don’t really need to request help from the federal government to be able to access the resources in other jurisdictions across Canada.”
He says they have already called in resources from the Yukon and Alberta, which have provided both crews on the ground as well as aircraft support in the air.
Holland, who has fought wildfires in the past, said Ontario is dealing with an unprecedented forest fire situation.
“We have never seen fire lines grow and progress so largely and quickly as what we’re seeing in these fires, particularly up in Armstrong, as well as one in Upsala and one in Quetico,” he said. “Those fires grew substantially despite efforts of our crews to contain them from the very early stages up to the magnitude that they are right now.”
He said firefighting efforts were focused on containing and trying to prevent the spread.
“We had the water bombers on those, and then we had to quickly shift to protecting people, property, and communities, he said. “A couple of those fires that are burning right now are beyond the capacity to be extinguished. We really need help from Mother Nature, and so many of these large fires are like that.”
Holland says they have set up sprinklers on properties and valued assets, and are helping to co-ordinate with the evacuation of the communities that are most impacted.
