By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
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The BC Wildfire Service will be using night vision technology to carry out night air operations for the first time this wildfire season following the conclusion of trials this spring. The operations will not immediately involve water drops, however.
“We’re looking at nighttime aircraft, and we are beyond the trial phase, we will be adopting overnight aircraft capacity to a certain degree this wildfire season,” Beau Michaud, Penticton Fire Zone BC Wildfire Technician told the Times Chronicle on the sidelines of Anarchist Mountain’s annual FireSmart/Wildfire Preparedness Day.
“There was some trialling going on earlier in the spring, and we’re happy with the results,” he said.
Erika Berg, Provincial Wildfire Information Officer confirmed to the Times Chronicle that half a dozen BC Wildfire staff are now trained in the use of the night vision technology and will fly the night missions with helicopter pilots who are similarly equipped and experienced in night flying.
Training for night operations was scheduled for the spring of 2023 but due to the early onset of the wildfire season it was postponed to this year. Initial trials were conducted as far back as 2019 with night vision reconnaissance and wildfire detection on rotary wing aircraft (helicopters) as well as a heavy tanker trial conducted in the summer of 2020.
This spring’s training has now been completed and so “coming out of that, we have six or seven BC Wildfire staff, who will be rostered to be able to perform night vision technology missions and to basically go up with a pilot that is trained to do these night vision flights,” she says.
She adds that while the trials are done, the BCWS is still in a “discovery phase” of how best it can integrate the technology into its operations. “We have now seen and are confident about using this technology and incorporating it . . . we’re in an exploratory phase of assessing the benefits and using lessons learned to influence how we’re going to use it,” she added.
This includes decisions around whether it will be used beyond wildfire detection, mapping and reconnaissance to undertake actual water drops as well.
She noted that the wildfire service’s counterparts in Alberta and California have already been using this technology for some time and “We are learning from our partners in how they have integrated it into their operations, but ultimately BC is different than both those areas,” particularly in terms of the terrain. The complexity of BC’s mountainous terrain already poses safety challenges in the daytime, let alone at night.
Again she says BC Wildfire is working with these other two jurisdictions to understand “how to safely integrate night vision into our firefighting operations, but also just doing it at a pace that we are most comfortable with that we can feel confident will benefit us, always weighing the pros and cons incorporating new technology into the operations.”
She notes that the BCWS has contracts with over 100 aviation service providers and around a dozen of those have night vision abilities.
“So if we have a situation that meets the criteria where it would be useful for us to use night vision technology on a mission, like for example, if there’s expected lightning near a populated area, then we see that as has been an opportunity for us to utilize this technology to give us more information on where those strikes may have occurred and so we can call upon one of those companies,” she said.
Because of BCWS’ core priority to protect communities first, Berg says it’s anticipated that the focus, at least in the early stages, would be on using night vision technology in these types of situations.
She says the plan is to build out capacity in this area so with the several staff trained going into this season, more staff will be trained next season and more again the following season.
When asked whether this would be a “game changer” in the fight against wildfires in the province, Berg said no. “It’s another tool that we are incorporating and exploring to manage wildfires,” she said, adding that the service is always looking at what new technologies are available.
“But of course, we just want to ensure that we integrate them safely and effectively and we are going at a pace where we can go about it safely and effectively,” she reiterated.
Responding to questions around the cost of such operations, Berg noted that the provincial budget for fighting wildfires is increasing every year, but noted that night operations cost the same as daytime operations with only an incremental cost involved in the night vision goggles which are provided by the air operator.
