As fires blaze across British Columbia and 2500 Kelowna residents are still under an evacuation order, crews work tirelessly to battle the flames. Privately-contracted initial attack crews are the first to respond from the ground when fires like the one in Smith Creek spread.
“We dump a lot of water on the fire,” Eric Kopee of Fall Line Forestry told CTV News. “We'll just go through, assess the scene, make sure it's safe. Go in with hand tools, get the water lines set up and start putting out the fires."
The long work days are filled with intensely physical labour.
"We've been out for three, four days deployed now and we've had 16 [to]18 hour days,” Kopee said. “I went to bed at 12:30 last night and slept for three hours and got up and did it all again."
“It can get pretty grueling,” said forest firefighter Jake Sparks with a laugh. ”But your hands suffer the worst. Really that's about it.”
Scorching temperatures and penetrating dust and smoke add to the difficult conditions.
"It keeps a guy short on breath if you're in a smoky spot,” said firefighter Josh Fuder. “The crew boss keeps us advised to stay up wind of our smoke so it's not right in your face the whole day."
Kopee had two words to describe the fire.
"Intense and erratic. So we have to put in a lot of boot grease to get this done," he said.
Crew members have seen firsthand that they have started to make some headway and the flames have started to lessen over the past several days.
"When the fire started on Thursday we did get a lot of aggressive fire activity,” said fire information officer Kelsey Winter of the B.C. Forest Services. “It was rank five so jumping tree top to tree top. Since Thursday we've seen a very big decrease in fire behaviour so it has calmed down quite a bit"
As crews begin to win the battle against the flames, they are motivated by the thousands of West Kelowna residents still out of their homes.
"Kelowna is so close so it makes a guy feel pretty good you know,” Fuder said. “It's almost like you’re saving people's houses and properties."
Around 200 firefighters from British Columbia are expected to arrive in B.C. on Saturday and Sunday, joining more than 1,500 provincial firefighters.
With a report from CTV Kelowna’s Kent Molgat