The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency is explaining why now was the right time to bring in federal help to fight wildfires.
The call for federal help in the northern Saskatchewan wildfire battle was made on Wednesday.
SPSA officials say the need for extra type 3 firefighters to help fight the fires had arrived – something they said wasn’t a need earlier in the season.
The SPSA held a media briefing on Thursday afternoon where officials were asked what the tipping point was to call for federal help.
“It really is about right resources at the right time,” said Marlo Pritchard president of the SPSA.
Pritchard says rain in recent weeks means some of the fires aren’t burning as hot allowing more use of type 3 firefighters.
“The fires are allowing for us to put type threes, onto the line and and to allow us to move other type ones and type twos to more active areas of those fires,” he said. “Our current type three resources that we have trained in the province have appeared to have been maxed out and we are still in a need of getting more, due to the fire situation.”
Pritchard says they had also maxed out all the type 3 firefighters from First Nation partners like the Prince Albert Grand Council.
In the meantime, the Government of Saskatchewan has faced criticism for not requesting federal help sooner, however, Pritchard says a request for federal help falls on the shoulders of the SPSA and not the provincial government.
As of Thursday, 56 active wildfires are burning in the province and 15 of them are considered not contained.
A total of 11 communities are facing evacuation. 7 full evacuations and 4 partial evacuations.