Sixty-six wildland firefighting recruits from around the province tested their mettle last week during the second of three week-long bootcamps run out of Merritt’s Provincial Wildfire Training Centre.
Nearly 200 new recruits who will work as wildland firefighters around B.C. will graduate from the bootcamps this month.
Each week-long training session begins with a rigorous fitness test, which determines admissibility to the rest of the week.
It also sets the tone for the physically and mentally challenging week ahead.
Although 24-year-old recruit Holly Stewart worked as a wildland firefighter twice before, she said preparing to work in the field each season is tough.
“Mentally and physically, it’s demanding,” she said.
She said one of the biggest challenges is “seeing how hard you can work and pushing a little bit beyond that.”
But with hard work comes reward, and Stewart said the rewarding aspect of doing such a tough job keeps her coming back each summer.
“I just thought it seemed like a really interesting and challenging job and I’m sort of interested in forestry and it’s a great way to work outdoors and challenge yourself,” she said.
In general, each day of bootcamp is about 12 hours, beginning with fitness training from 6 to 7 a.m.
“It’s been everything from running as fast as you can to carrying lots of gear around to just strength training exercises,” Stewart said.
After that, recruits do classroom training for most of the day. Subjects covered in the classroom include fire behaviour, fire weather and fuel types.
For Stewart, that classroom training has shed light on the differences between fighting forest fires in B.C. and in Alberta.
“The terrain is a lot different from the majority of Alberta, so that’s been really exciting for me, at least, to learn about different terrain and different fuel types and different tree identification,” she said.
Recruits do field exercises in the late afternoon or evening, depending on the day’s work.
Halfway through the bootcamp, training was a day-long field exercise that involved laying hoses (which weigh an estimated 80 pounds), navigation challenges and hand-digging fireguards in a relay course.
“It was just as much stuff as you can do probably in like nine hours of just running around a forest,” she said, adding that was her favourite part of training so far.
Perhaps the most vital lesson the new recruits learn in bootcamp is the importance of effective communication and teamwork in the field, with nearly every exercise involving working with a strike team of five, and working with other teams on group exercises.
“We’ve just gradually gotten better and better at working together and better at being efficient with tasks and everyone knows what they’re doing right off the bat,” Stewart said. “We’ve been really good about trading off leadership roles and also learning opportunities, making sure if someone is a little bit weaker in one area they get to really work on that and practise, whether it’s setting up the pumps or navigating.”
A Fernie ski patroller in the winter, Stewart said she’s impressed with the calibre of the week-long camp in preparing new recruits for the summer ahead.
“I don’t know who’s been working harder — the students or the instructors,” she said.
New recruit bootcamp chair Ryan Chapman has run the camp for the last 15 years, and said each year’s exercises are designed to bring out the recruits’ teamwork.
“We’ve done a lot of leadership and group dynamics exercises,” Stewart said.
As far as the biggest reward: “Just finishing the day, having completed something with a good group of people.”
Stewart said the instructors were fantastic and she felt well prepared to head into the field for the summer.
“It’s amazing how quickly you get to know your group of five people,” she said.
They practised looking for smouldering fires that could come back up, extinguishing a small fire.
“Good communication is really important because you want to know what everybody else is doing around you,” she said.
The final bootcamp for this forest fire season wraps up this week. After their final exam, the recruits are placed in stations around the province, including in Merritt.
The $4 million Provincial Wildfire Training Centre on Airport Road is in its second year of operations.
“It’s been positive and really good. It’s been a lot of new stuff to learn and working with new people and working hard. It’s definitely been a busy, hectic week but it’s been really fun.”
