Jeff Jackson

As forest fire season draws near, volunteer fire crews in rural Newfoundland are preparing. A new proactive approach was a year in the making. Departments from Blaketown to Heart’s Content along Trinity Bay are partnering up to have clear plans in place in the event of worst-case scenarios. “It is a drill, and at the end of it we’re going to have a postmortem or a debrief of it and pick it apart and say, ‘Boys, we could have done this better’ or ‘That was a really good point’ and we can follow it from there,” said Jeff Jackson, a 39-year veteran firefighter in Whiteway. …Wildfire season in Newfoundland begins on May 1 and ends on Sept 30. In Labrador, the season begins May 15. Jackson said it’s about being in the right place — protecting the communities — while provincial fire teams battle the fires from inside forested land.