New water bombers, lack of hurricanes helped this fire season

Nova Scotia wildfire season officially came to a close Thursday and thankfully it was less destructive than recent years. We're joined now by Jim Rudderham, Director for Fleet and Forest Protection with the Department of Natural Resources. So there was a bit of a spring surge in wildfires this year. Given what many Nova Scotians lived through in 2023 and again in 2025, are you surprised some folks are still ignoring burn restrictions? Yes, we're constantly surprised by that. We set the burn restrictions daily during wildfire season for the safety of all Nova Scotians. And it's based on science and real situations. And we do know what we're doing. So we were always surprised when people continue to burn. Now, the wildfire that caused the most impact was the Mooseland Road fire that was in July. It burned 1,700 hectares and led to the evacuation of more than 100 residents. I'm just wondering, how difficult was it to bring that fire under control? Oh, it was a challenge, but our crews and our aircraft and everyone involved worked very hard to do so, and they did. So it happened very quickly, which was very good for everyone involved. Now, the province deployed a fleet of four new helicopters. They contracted water bombers stationed in the province all summer. I'm just wondering, how did that equipment speed up your ability to put fires like that one out? Yeah, so our new helicopters replaced an existing fleet of four helicopters so so again having that capacity with newer machines and newer features certainly helped the water bombers the fixed wing water bombers were a welcome addition to have any more tools you're going to add to the toolbox to help with putting out wildfires as quickly as possible always helps it's wonderful to have now compared to 2023 where we saw the Barrington Tantallon wildfires and last year with the Long Lake fire did your crews breathe a bit of a sigh of relief this time around i i would hope so uh but again we did have conditions it could have happened at any time as it did in Mooseland Road um but but you know we're always ready um i think the crews felt better for this season uh just given what was happening but again conditions were there to grow and it could have happened and it did not so everyone probably felt a little sigh of relief but while you're waiting for something to happen And you always have that nervous, nervous trepidation waiting. Yes, I can imagine. Well, the 2025 Long Lake fire smoldered underground all winter and it wasn't officially declared out until late May of this year. So how did that keep your crews busy in the off season? So that fire, we didn't declare it out last fall. We certainly had it well, well contained last season. We knew it couldn't go anywhere again, given the conditions of the time and how well it was contained. and then and then winter hit and that's that fire was covered with snow for the for quite a long time so we really didn't have to do anything with that fire at all when the snow was on the ground once the conditions started to develop again for for fire weather where things could happen we paid closer attention for sure to that area to see what would happen and eventually we didn't see anything happen so eventually we did perform a scan on that fire just to be absolutely sure because it was such a large fire. We just wanted to make sure it was out. So it didn't cause, except for some ground truthing for some points in the spring, it wasn't a major concern all winter for us. Now, hurricane season has been fairly quiet in this region, very quiet. Does that help lower the risk for next year when it comes to debris on the ground? Well, we never say things are quiet because that's when things are going to happen. But we would hope so. Yeah, any fire-like fuel, so any kind of fuel that's out there, it helps it to burn. So just having the fact that we don't have huge areas of blowdown will certainly be helpful. What can homeowners do to reduce the risk to their properties? Yeah, there's so much that homeowners can do to help with everything. We work so hard on operations of putting these fires out. there's so people would if people didn't start these fires would be so much further ahead and for homeowners that live in areas that could be affected there is so much that they can do to help to help protect their own homes in the normal time of year the FireSmart program there's all kinds of information about the FireSmart program available online people just have to look for that just cleaning up your properties if it ever got to a point where where something was coming and Create a defensible barrier around your property so that structure protection could be used. Keep your lawns deep. Keep the vegetation away from your home. Any old debris or stuff away from your home all helps. Keep your wood piles away, your barbecues. Everything that could cause a concern with a fire is all listed in FireSmart. There's so much people can do on their own to help with that. All right, some good advice there, Jim Rotherham. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. Thanks very much.