Foreign firefighters fight flames, fatigue and get 'eaten alive' by mosquitoes

For some other firefighters, their trip to Canada has yielded a front-row view to infernos of a magnitude few of them had ever seen.

Eighteen-year-old Hunter Sousa from Maine celebrated his high school graduation by hopping in a truck and heading to Nova Scotia to fight the biggest forest fire in the province's history.

Sousa works for the Maine forest service as an on-call firefighter, but had never before fought a fire. The call from his superior came on a Thursday.

"They said they'd be meeting in Bangor Friday night and I had my graduation Friday night, so I graduated and got my diploma, and headed to Bangor and met with the rest of the crew, and then we headed to Nova Scotia," he said in a recent interview.

Sousa is one of the many foreign firefighters who were pressed into service as Canada battles its worst wildfire season in recent memory. Hailing from 10 different countries on five continents, they've been battling flames, fatigue and mosquitoes during stints of 14 consecutive days or more in unfamiliar conditions.

In Sousa's case, his main duty at the Barrington Lake fire, in Nova Scotia's southwest, consisted of mapping the extent of the fire by walking around the edge of the burned sector -- called the "black" -- and marking the perimeter in an app on his phone, as well as putting out the occasional hot spot.

For some other firefighters, their trip to Canada has yielded a front-row view to infernos of a magnitude few of them had ever seen.

Eric Flores, the head of a team of more than 100 French firefighters dispatched to Quebec, says the fires are far larger -- and more challenging -- than what he usually sees at home.