Southern Manitoba fire chief and firefighter drive pumper truck 15 hours to help in Lynn Lake

Fire departments in southern Manitoba are answering the call to help northern communities save their homes and lands.

The volunteer fire chief in Morris, Man., Trevor Thiessen, and another firefighter helped respond to the 71,000-hectare wildfire near Lynn Lake and Marcel Colomb First Nation last week and over the weekend.

"It was intense," Thiessen said. "It was surreal."

They drove their pumper tanker 15 hours from Morris to Lynn Lake and stayed there for five days, he said, helping to set up sprinklers on homes, the hospital and school, where flames came dangerously close.

They were there when flames blew into the edge of town on Sunday.

"You could see it in the distance. You could see the smoke, and then you could see the flames up in the crowns of the trees, and then you could hear it, and then it was on you," Thiessen said in an interview on Wednesday, two days after returning home.

Thiessen described the pumper tanker, which can carry and pump 2,500 gallons of water, as a "very key" piece in the response.

"We were able to stage somewhere and actually pump water for quite some time before we had to refill, which was really crucial," he said.

"The water system was right to the max with the hydrants running, running sprinklers and whatnot, so that was really beneficial to have."

Their deployment left his fire department's main fire engine, ladder truck and 20 other volunteer firefighters back in Morris, which Thiessen says left the town well protected while they were away.

If a fire had ignited that they weren't able to handle, the fire department Morris would have been able to draw from resources in their mutual aid district of Boyne River, which includes fire departments in Carman and Portage la Prairie.

Southern Manitoba has 17 mutual aid districts that share resources in emergencies.

Northern Manitoba doesn't have an equivalent reciprocal response system, due to geographic barriers and long travel distances, according to the province's website. However, it has three northern training districts that ensure training programs are available to communities in the region.

Manitoba's Office of the Fire Commissioner and Emergency Management Organization work together to make requests to local fire departments, a provincial spokesperson said in an email on Wednesday.