SASKATOON — Businessman Adam Hartle has been helping fight wildfires for close to 16 years now, his way of serving the community and the province that supported his construction firm.
Hartle owns Core Rock Consulting and Construction and in the summer of 2021 created CRCC Wildfire Division, a critical incident response team ready to be deployed anywhere to help firefighters combat wildfires, or assist in other emergencies. His mission is to act as a complement to government agencies responding to environmental emergencies
The division is based in nearby Martensville and it has a satellite station northwest of Saskatoon at Crystal Springs, which is 40 minutes away from Prince Albert where a major wildfire occurred in May this year. A local state of emergency was declared.
They currently have 10 trucks, five of which are wildland fire engines designed to fight wildfires, two fire ice units and two heavy duty water tankers, plus rescue boats and other specialized equipment.
His team is not limited to fighting wildfires. Hartle told SASKTODAY they can also assist during extreme winter conditions and they offered their services to the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency during the recent snowstorm that battered the province, letting them know CRCC Wildfire had personnel on standby to assist.
They can also put their experience and equipment to use to mitigate such disasters as plough wind damage and environmental spills. Even before CRCC Wildfire was formed, Hartle's construction company has provided equipment and operators in such events, in addition to wildfires.
Hartle had been a volunteer firefighter in the province for more than 15 years.
“I was involved in the fires of note in the province. I was involved in the wildfires in La Ronge in 2015 and in Prince Albert National Park in 2019,” he said.
“About seven years ago, I started to get more involved in wildfire work. Mainly, from our construction company we would provide heavy equipment to help mitigate large fires … It just came to a point where these wildfires are getting big and many clearly need additional resources and specialized equipment to complement the government services.”
That’s when he decided to form the Wildfire division.
“I bought equipment and I hired firefighters that were already trained from all over the province, that were available, to come to work for us."
When the government puts a call out to municipal fire departments for help, Hartle explains, they can't all answer, nor do they have enough gear anyway,
“They would put the call out and there will be all these firemen that will be available to come and help, but they can’t send everybody, and they don’t want to send any of their men without proper gear.”
With the Wildfire division being a private company, they can hire firefighters even if they are employed by a municipality as long as there won’t be any conflict with their schedules.
“We have an application process and very vetted. We make sure that we have exactly what we need in an applicant. We have firefighters that are currently with municipal departments and we know from our operational standpoint that when we call out for additional members, we will never ask for more than just a couple from each municipality so that we don't leave them in a bad position,” said Hartle.
Having no conflict with their schedules allow firefighters to have two jobs — one with the municipality or city where they are assigned and one with the CRCC Wildfire Division. He added the situation depends on the municipality or city fire department.
"Some are busier than others, but we give their people work if they want to go to work with us.”
He said, “If they want the experience — and that’s what we give them at work— we give them the experience. We give them all the tools they need. Everything that we use is the same thing the government uses when it comes to equipment, tools and protective clothing — wildfire and bunker gear.”
Being a volunteer firefighter and getting involved in a number of wildfires allowed Hartle to see and experience firsthand what kind of support and personnel are needed to combat wildfires.
“Constantly you read in the media that ‘we’re low on resources, we need more funding, we need more help. We need more of this and that,’” he said. “And we’re in Western Canada. This is happening everywhere, [like] in the United States. They need more help. These fires are getting bigger, stronger, faster, and they're taking out more areas than they've ever had before. And that’s our [CRCC Wildfire Division] goal, to complement the provincial agencies and work with them.”
Latest technology
He said that he sees to it that his Wildfire response team gets the latest technology in fighting forest fires.
“We have the capability right now to spray fire ice gel on a house. If you know fire ice gel, it’s got a flashpoint of 8,000 degrees and it can stay on a house for hours."
He added that using fire ice is becoming the latest thing in fighting wildfires.
“There's always these new technologies that are coming out. And we're able to, on the ground, mix this product and apply it. So, structure protection is a really big thing for us, too.”
“We can do both; we can address the wildfire and we can suppress it with our off-road trucks, fire crews, and suppression systems. Or we can flip to structure protection and look at ways to deploy sprinklers or fire ice gels to protect structures. We are balancing our technology to be able to apply fire ice quickly on the ground. Fire ice is becoming the thing.”
Hartle said they were deployed to help combat and contain the Hudson Bay area fires where they mobilized a four-member, two-truck team within hours.
“We had people in the Hudson Bay area within, I think, eight hours of the call.”
But their goal is to speed up their response time by establishing a network of communication within the proper agencies of the provincial government.
“We're looking to expedite that response time and we’ve done a lot of things internally such as [obtaining a] permit with the highway traffic board for us to run red lights and use emergency devices now," he said.
“We've got an open network of communication established within the province. So, we've done a few things that way, and we plan to have discussions on how we can be there [location of forest fires] — be involved sooner rather than later."
