In the battle against the Los Angeles wildfires, one Toronto charity is stepping up.
GlobalFire is an Etobicoke-based organization made up of first responders and other volunteers from across Canada.
The group responds to disasters on a national and international scale, often raising funds, distributing aid to regions in need, donating equipment or even sending volunteers to train fire departments abroad. The majority of their efforts are funded by donations with some small government grants awarded.
GlobalFire has sent almost 100 fire skids, self-contained firefighting systems, to communities across Canada in the last few years, but their donations extend outside of the country.
Most recently, four were sent to help increase the firefighting capacity of local fire departments in Los Angeles.
“I personally drove those four units to the airport and I handed them over to Air Canada to send on the plane,” said Adrian Award, a firefighter with Whitby Fire and Emergency Services and a volunteer with GlobalFire.
Each fire skid donated by GlobalFire has a 1,000-litre plastic tank that holds water and is equipped with a fire pump and fire hose. Its portable and relatively lightweight design means the apparatus can be lifted onto the back of a pickup truck and used to access fires that may be difficult to reach with a full-sized fire truck.
GlobalFire is “racing” to send another shipment of skids to Los Angeles as early as next week so they can be dispersed to a wider area.
“Pretty much every fire department has more firefighters than they do fire equipment, so if you can increase the number of fire apparatus then you can spread out your firefighting power,” Award said. “I’m very confident that the departments in L.A. will be able to put these to good use.”
Though the tools aren’t new to fire fighting efforts, skids have become increasingly popular as forest fires and wildfires have become increasingly common, Award said.
Each fire skid can be made in a couple of days and costs less than $5,000 to assemble. In comparison, a fire truck could cost a municipality over $1 million.
The L.A. area is experiencing record-setting wildfires that have become one of the most devastating natural disasters in Southern California’s history. The area scorched by the major fires alone is equal to three times the size of Manhattan.
After the skids arrived in Los Angeles Wednesday afternoon, Marc Pavan, a long-time volunteer with Global fire arrived several hours later. Pavan, and another volunteer, had flown in from Edmonton. He works as a firefighter and paramedic with Strathcona County Emergency Services.
The two were tasked with the responsibility of transporting the four fire skids to a fire camp just north of Pasadena.
“We can’t see the fire directly because it’s kind of up into the hills but there is definitely a layer of smoky haze in the air. You can smell and taste the wildfire in the air,” Pavan said, describing the atmosphere. “We could see where the air water bombers had dropped big, long, red streaks of flame retardants onto the hillsides to protect the infrastructure. You could tell the fire was getting very close.”
When Pavan and the other volunteer arrived with the equipment, they said they could see how “incredibly excited” the teams were to see the skids coming off the truck.
“We have more fire skids in Toronto and Alberta ready to go, so in the following days, we’ll be co-ordinating with them to see who can use more and where we can bring them,” Pavan said.
As a firefighter, Award said the devastation in Los Angeles hits close to home and he’s hoping he can help in the region more in the future.
“We all became firemen and paramedics because we wanted to help people,” Pavan said. “(GlobalFire) helps us help more people.”