Fireboats as a tool to fight fires in the boreal forest

Opinion

In Manitoba, we are consumed with attention to wildfires and have an extraordinarily high number of people who have been evacuated from their communities. The costs of all this are very high. It is time to look at adding a potentially very effective tool — a fleet of fireboats.

In the summer of 2015, Naomi and I were in northern Saskatchewan at Besnard Lake (where we have been involved for many years with a team of people looking at bald eagles — see jongerrard.ca for more details). That summer, a fire started at the north end of Besnard Lake, a large body of water that is 45 kilometres long. It spread quickly, threatening homes and cabins.

At that time, other fires were also threatening La Ronge and other communities. As firefighting resources were focused on saving the large communities, there was not even a single firefighter or water bomber available to help people on Besnard Lake.

Fortunately, Doug Sands, one of the co-owners at Collins Camp (a tourist and fishing camp, now under new ownership as Besnard Lake Camp), had a business pumping out sewage lagoons, and significant equipment to do this. He also had experience fighting forest fires in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

He and his team modified a manure agitation boat in their shop into a firefighting water cannon. This “shop-modified” fireboat’s water cannon used six-inch pipes connected to a nozzle of 2 or 2 ½ inch diameter.

A shallow draft of about half a meter enabled the boat to float near the shore. It was able to spray 2,500 imperial gallons per minute up to 100 meters to thoroughly wet down the area around a cabin. The water cannon could thus deliver up to 150,000 gallons in an hour — a great deal more water than can be delivered in an hour by a water bomber.

Drawing water from the lake provided a virtually inexhaustible supply. For further protection, gas-powered water pumps and sprinklers were set up to wet down the cabin and immediate surroundings, since the force of the water from the fireboat was too powerful to aim directly at the cabin.

This fireboat, assembled in a day, proved extraordinarily effective in protecting cabins along the shore. From the day the fireboat was present, not a single home or cabin was lost at sites where the fireboat was deployed. It was able to spray, with a large amount of water, the area immediately around each threatened cabin, which was extraordinarily effective in protecting cabins.

The fireboat also proved very effective in stopping the fire from jumping across water, even when the passage was relatively narrow. In one instance, a fire was proceeding quickly down a peninsula, and was expected to cross a narrow (about 40 meters across) channel without much difficulty. The fireboat was brought to the area and thoroughly hosed down the ground and trees on the south side of the channel, and put out small fires which started there. The fire, which had been advancing dangerously, was brought to a dead stop.

Before the fireboat was present, the fire had crossed two channels in the northeast arm of Besnard Lake. After crossing the channel, the fire burned one cabin to the ground and then jumped another channel and spread for many kilometers, burning another cabin and threatening others. If the fireboat had been available earlier, I am sure it would have been able to stop the fire from crossing the two channels, thereby reducing the total extent of the fire by more than 75 per cent.

Fireboats will not be effective every time, but in some circumstances they can be very useful in dramatically reducing the extent of a fire.

In northern Manitoba, as in northern Saskatchewan, there are many lakes and rivers in the boreal forest. A fire jumping across channels or to islands or from island to island has been a problem, as Chief David Monias of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation has indicated (It’s basically got a mind of its own, June 5). Fireboats could be very effective in stopping this.

Because there are many northern lakes and rivers, it would never be cost-effective to have a fireboat on every one. But it would be possible to build a fireboat in several pieces which could be transported by helicopter and then assembled on a lake where needed. This would allow a rapid early response to a fire. A large fire might need a number of such fireboats — perhaps as many as 10. Overall, the cost of a fireboat is far less than the cost of a water bomber, and it can be assembled much more quickly.

Following the Fort McMurray fire in 2016, I proposed in the Manitoba legislature the option of using fireboats effectively in this province. I also went to talk to people at the South East Whiteshell fire department at West Hawk Lake, where they have a fireboat and have found it useful. It is time to build on Canadian ingenuity (as happened at Besnard Lake) and start building fireboats in Canada that can be used as an additional tool to address boreal forest fires effectively and to reduce the extent of fires and the need for evacuations.

It will not be a magical solution for all fires, but it could be an additional “Made In Canada” tool which would be very useful in the boreal forest.

(Thanks are owed to Doug Sands and Mervin Fremont for help with the technical details of the fireboat.)

Jon Gerrard is the former MLA for River Heights.