Twenty NS forest firefighters deployed to fight stubborn fire near Whitehorse

Twenty professional Nova Scotia firefighters departed from Halifax Stanfield International Airport for Whitehorse early Sunday morning to help battle a major wildfire raging just west of the Yukon capital.

“They put out a call for help through that subscription from various agencies, and that’s how we got them there,” said Patricia Jreige, spokeswoman for the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables.

The 20 wildland firefighters stationed at Natural Resources offices across the province and an agency representative will join forces with crews who have been working on the Takhini Bridge near Whitehorse, about 900 miles north of the border with British Columbia.

Nova Scotia firefighters left on a charter flight at 6:30 a.m. Sunday.

Nova Scotia’s firefighting contingent will be deployed as part of the Canadian Mutual Aid Resource Sharing Agreement, which ensures that all provinces and territories receive assistance if wildfires become too large to handle.

Wildfire firefighters from New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and the United States were in Nova Scotia during the height of wildfires that swept through the province in May and June.

Requests for assistance from other jurisdictions are coordinated through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.

The affected province or territory, in this case the Yukon, covers the costs of the jurisdictions sending aid.

The Takhini Bridge fire is one of 20 wildfires burning in the Yukon, according to a release late Saturday from the territorial government, led by Prime Minister Ranj Pillai, who was born and raised in western Cape Breton.

The Takhini Bridge was the only Yukon fire to be categorized as a full response.

The Yukon release said firefighters continue to work on the fire while carefully monitoring hot spots as the warm weather continues.

The bulldozer enveloping the fire is about 15 miles (25 kilometers) long, the result of long days by heavy equipment operators and ground crew support, the government reported.

The government’s release marked the imminent arrival of Nova Scotia’s firefighters.

“While good progress has been made in controlling the fire, these imported assets will allow more ground to be covered and tired crews to be released,” the release said.

“The fire remains out of control and gets a full response. The latest estimate of the size of the fire is 1,546 hectares.”

As of Saturday, 35 firefighters were on hand, including a 14-member Yukon First Nations wildfire crew, an incident management team, seven pieces of heavy equipment and two helicopters.

An incident command post has been set up at Hidden Valley Elementary School in Whitehorse to oversee firefighting. Meals and accommodation for resources outside the territory will be at the school.