MONTREAL — The techniques used to put out the wildfires burning in Canada differ somewhat by region, but depend largely on people on the ground using hoses and shovels to dig up hot spots one at a time, experts say.

According to the Canadian Interagency Wildfire Center, there were 430 active fires across Canada as of Thursday afternoon, with 235 spreading.

“No matter how many fires there are, tactics to extinguish them remain broadly the same and require a combination of airstrikes and firefighting on the ground,” said a veteran firefighter and former member of the city’s fire protection program. Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.

Dave Cowan, who now trains new recruits at private company Fire 1, said that while planes can help slow the progression of a fire, the hard work of putting it out is still done on the ground.

“The depth charges are a great support system, but they won’t put out the fire,” he said in an interview this week. It’s the person with the shovel who will eliminate the final hot spot at the end of the day.

Cowan said firefighting tactics depend in part on the landscape. In Ontario and Quebec, where lakes are plentiful, most of the work is done with water, either mixed with foam and dropped from an airplane or pumped from lakes and rivers into hoses held on the ground by firefighters.

In drier places like British Columbia, fire retardants would be used more often — placed near the blaze — and preemptively burned to clear an area of ​​vegetation to serve as fuel, he said.

Stéphane Caron, a spokesman for the Society for the Protection of Forests from Fire (SOPFEU), said that while firefighting tactics are consistent, the large number of fires in his province is forcing the agency to abandon its goal of putting out all fires below the 51st level. delete latitude.

“There are far too many[fires]for us to do that, so our focus right now is really about protecting communities, lives and critical infrastructure,” he said in an interview this week.

He said the agency’s firefighting capacity is about 30 fires at a time. There were 133 fires in the province on Thursday.

Given the limited resources, “our goal isn’t necessarily to put out the fire, but to contain it and hopefully get it under control so we can deal with another fire,” he continued.

Mr Caron said the first line of attack against a fire would be water bombers, which can carry around 6,000 liters of water and need to fly by every 10 to 12 minutes to be effective.

However, he did mention that the plane could only help contain a fire. It is the firefighters on site who extinguish a fire, above ground with lances, but also underground. This is done using a tool similar to an ax called a Pulaski to dig out the spots where the fire is hiding beneath the surface.

The biggest challenge in the current situation, he said, is that the fires are breaking out in several provinces at the same time, straining resources normally shared between provinces and forcing authorities to look abroad for reinforcements.

Roger Collet, wildfire management officer with the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, explains that firefighting begins with finding a spot that offers a good escape route, and then fighting the fire on its flanks before moving toward the head.

He said that while the tactics haven’t changed much in recent years, they are constantly being refined with improvements in the technology that helps predict and monitor fires. For example, drones offer a cheaper and easier way to monitor a fire than helicopters. “They’re still fine-tuning the technology,” he said.

Experts agree that as the fire progresses, workers may need to retreat and focus on building defenses to protect homes, businesses and critical infrastructure like communications towers. This can be accomplished by using a bulldozer to level a piece of land and creating a firebreak near structures, or by pre-emptively burning vegetation.

MM. Caron and Cowan say that the main danger to firefighters is not being surrounded by fire, which is closely observed, but rather being injured by falling trees, falls or heat stroke. The work poses a great challenge for the firefighters, who have to deal with the heat of the fires, mud and water, and difficult terrain.

“You walk through the bush, which is made up of logs, hills and rocks,” notes Mr. Cowan. It’s not like walking a block, I’m telling you, it’s very demanding and it’s hot.

He points out that a fire is not considered fully “extinguished” until firefighters can get to the center of the burned area and make sure there are no hot spots left that could reignite and start another fire .