New Brunswick firefighters heading west to help with wildfires in Alberta

Fredericton -

The province of New Brunswick is sending 20 firefighters to Alberta to help battle wildfires.

"Once we get an order in from our partners in different provinces we start to organize,” said Roger Collet, wildfire prevention officer. “We bring the crews together from all different parts of the province.”

"Basically the crew is composed of forest rangers, so a lot of them have backgrounds in forestry,” said Jonathan Doucette, forest ranger and crew leader. “GPS, compass plus a lot of fire training, and we also have student fire crews that work for the department.”

For many forest rangers in the wildfire division, this has become routine every wildfire season.

Matthew Ness has gone out west four times before.

"It's a little bit nerve wracking, a little bit of anxiety, said Ness. “But we hope to get out there and help those folks as best we can.”

"It's always fun to go out and help. We don't know exactly where we're going as of now,” said Doucette. “We'll get our assignment when we get to Alberta.”

The minister of natural resources was there to see the crew off.

"We've got a long history of answering that call,” said Mike Holland. “There's many jurisdictions that make New Brunswick one of their first calls not just in the country but around the world. We have history of stepping in when needed and I'm really proud of our wild fire division, they deal with cutting edge technologies, they have some of the best training.”

According to a statement from a spokesperson with the province, there are currently no plans to send Nova Scotia firefighters to Alberta at this time.

They say with the weather being very dry in Nova Scotia right now, and an active wildfire, they would need to have the conditions improve before they would be able to commit support out west.

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