NORTH WEST RIVER, N.L. — Conservation officer Darren Jennings of North West River is on a team of Canadian firefighting specialists helping combat the wildfires still raging in Australia,
Jennings has been there since Jan. 22 and is coming home on Feb. 14. He’s working as a situation unit leader at an incident control centre in Victoria. He collects and analyzes information to help inform people involved with the fires on criteria such as where people are deployed and weather information.
He was deployed to British Columbia in 2017 to help with the wildfires there so he isn’t new to large-scale disaster response or wildfires. He said it is impressive to see such a major coordination event.
Temperatures this time of year in Victoria are in the 20-30 Celsius range, far different from at his home in North West River.
“One of the main factors as to whether I should go or not was leaving my wife in the middle of winter to deal with all the snow,” he said with a laugh.
He hopes to learn new skills from his experiences to bring back to Labrador. When he saw the position posted by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, he jumped at the opportunity.
Australia has implemented a number of fire control policies in the last decade, Jennings said, following a major fire in 2009.
“There have been a lot of changes in fire management here,” he said. “They’ve invested a lot in infrastructure and intelligence and computer modeling, you name it. It’s top-notch.”
He is one of nine from Canada currently at the complex and his team is responsible for three different fires.
Jennings, originally from Corner Brook, been a conservation officer for five years and has worked with the Department of Fisheries and Land Resources for 17 years.
Another conservation officer, Matthew Wells of Little Burnt Bay, is also there with Jennings.
Gerry Byrne, Minister of Fisheries and Land Resources, sent out a statement on Jan. 31 congratulating Jennings, Wells and Fire Training Specialist and Provincial FireSmart Liaison Joe Russell, who just returned to Canada.
“Their efforts have and will continue to serve the people of Australia very well,” Byrne said in a release.
