The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment’s Working on Fire programme is deploying a second contingent of 200 firefighters and 13 managers – Mzanzi Hotshots 2 – to assist in ongoing fire suppression operations in the Canadian Province of Alberta. This follows the deployment of 200 firefighters and 15 managers – on 3 June 2023. Mzanzi Hotshots 2 will leave for Edmonton, Canada, on Wednesday 14 June 2023… The deployment of both teams comes in response to an urgent request from the Canadian Inter-agency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) in terms of the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and South Africa. …The MOU signed in 2019, provides for the exchange of wildland fire management resources between the South Africa and Canada. It was put in place following two earlier deployments to Canada to suppress wild fires in Alberta and Manitoba.
WASHINGTON — The agency co-ordinating the deployment of U.S. firefighters and equipment to Canada says it is keeping a wary eye on its own looming fire season. The U.S. National Interagency Fire Center says there are currently 345 federal firefighters and support personnel helping out north of the border. A total of 649 U.S. personnel have been cycled through Canada since early May — but that number doesn’t include state-level resources that are also assisting. More than 100 firefighters and support workers have been sent separately to Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec, along with four airtankers from Alaska and Washington state. …But many of those workers will soon be needed closer to home, the agency warns, with the busy summer fire season rapidly approaching.