Canada continues to battle devastating wildfires this summer. Laura Tierno Patiño and Alberto López Hurtado from Castilla-La Mancha Wildfire Service were two of the firefighters deployed when Canada activated the UCPM for assistance.
Laura and Alberto shared their experience of the deployment as part of the international team from Europe and what they gained from it professionally and personally.
Canada is facing a record year of burnt area and wildfires. Quebec, Alberta, Nova Scotia and British Columbia are the provinces most affected. On just one day, 4 July, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) reported 623 active fires across the country, of which 324 were out of control.
On 8 June, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) was activated following a request for assistance from the Mission of Canada to the EU. Ground Forest Fire Fighting (GFFF) Teams from France, Spain and Portugal answered the call and were deployed to Quebec during June.
Two of these forest fire fighters were Laura Tierno Patiño and Alberto López Hurtado, helitack crew members from Castilla-La Mancha Wildfire Service. Helitack crews are transported by helicopter to the site of a wildfire, for fast assessment and response.
Laura and Alberto shared their experience of this deployment, and what they gained from it professionally and personally.
You are both just back from what was your first international deployment with the UCPM, to support Canada with the wildfires there. Was it what you expected, did anything surprise you?
Alberto: There were some surprises, yes. It was our first international mission like this, it was the first time we sent a complete unit. So there were surprises, although we had also heard from others that on this type of mission, every country is different.
What’s maybe most surprising is everything at the bureaucratic, logistic level, and the number of people involved, which is complex, sometimes quite complicated. That’s a little of what you need to get accustomed to in deployment.
Laura: the first surprise is the speed at which everything happens when you get the call to go and accept, but as Alberto says, we discovered new ways of working, it was a very positive experience.
On a deployment like this, we imagine that there’s an impact in how you work within the team
Laura: Yes, there were differences in the fuel for the fires, the fires themselves, all of that needed us to work in a quite different way how we are used to in Spain. We adapted how we work as a unit, changing how we normally work in Spain to respond to the different conditions there.
Alberto: As Laura says, when you have different fuel, different weather, that changes everything. It changes the tools you work with, the way you move, the logistics, the operations, the planning, all that changes and that takes you out of your comfort area. You have to quickly adapt and get used to another way of working.
In this case we had to divide our unit and quickly get accustomed to how the teams were already working there. We quickly reached the required rhythm and learned this way of working, were able to put it into practice and one hundred percent achieved what we needed to do.
How do you feel now you are back from the mission?
Laura: I am very pleased that I was able to experience this, that our unit could be relied upon, that we were able to adapt, to work well together, and to return with a good feeling about it. On a professional level, we gained knowledge, this has made us more flexible in how we work and we have learned a lot. And on a personal level, it’s the same. Along the way, we met people who treated us kindly, thanked us for all our help, and I really am happy with the experience.
Alberto: On how I feel now we are back, well, the famous jet lag is playing its part, my journey back was … complicated! The deployment was a powerful experience for me, both personally and professionally. On the professional level, as Laura says, we gained an increased awareness of other teams and their ways of working, not only Canada’s but other teams from Spain as well. We could see in their ways of working that it is very similar to ours but with their own variations, and it was very good to share in this knowledge. We are lucky to be a unit that works so well together - we know each other well, and this has strengthened us as a team and as friends.
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