Canada will deploy assets of the Royal Canadian Air Force to help fight the wildfires in and around Los Angeles, Defence Minister Bill Blair said in a statement Friday.
“I have approved a request to deploy @RCAF_ARC assets to transport firefighters, equipment, and other resources to California, to assist in fighting the devastating wildfires,” Blair said in a post on X.
Blair said the Canadian Forces “stand ready to transport personnel and equipment to support our American neighbours.”
Firefighters have been battling raging fires for several days now, with the flames killing 10 people and destroying whole neighbourhoods.
The decision by Blair comes a day after Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan said on X that the federal government, alongside Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, were ready to deploy 250 firefighters, aircraft equipment and other resources as early as Thursday night.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Thursday that he’d been “back and forth exchanging” with California Gov. Gavin Newsom to offer Canadian resources.
“Unfortunately, Canada has developed a significant amount of expertise in wildfires that are encroaching on suburban and urban areas,” said Trudeau, who was in Washington for the funeral of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.
Late that day, B.C. Forests Minister Ravi Parmer said on X that California had come to B.C. directly, requesting the province’s “senior-level expertise” to work with them.
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“California has supported us in our time of need, and we’re now able to reciprocate that support,” Parmer wrote.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith also said her province was preparing to deploy an incident command team to California, along with wildfire-fighting resources, such as water bombers and night-vision helicopters.
A spokesperson for Sajjan’s office had told Global News that Alberta’s support was a part of the overall resources he announced Thursday.
Quebec also has support in the region, with its forest fire protection agency SOPFEU saying two water bombers and crew that had been contracted in the region since September remained in California.
The fires have burned more than 10,000 homes and other structures since Tuesday, when the first flames began popping up north of downtown Los Angeles.
Even for California, which has seen massive wildfires in previous years, the scope of the flames is jarring with the Pacific Palisades flattened to rubble. The fire there has become the most destructive Los Angeles has seen in modern history.
In Malibu, blackened palm strands were all that was left above debris where oceanfront homes once stood.
New blazes have continued to crop up as well, with the Kenneth Fire starting in the San Fernando Valley just three kilometres from a school serving as a shelter for evacuees from another fire. The flames were stopped, however, by a large and aggressive response by firefighters as it moved into neighbouring Ventura County.
Fire danger warnings are in place through Friday afternoon, but winds have died down from earlier in the week, when hurricane-force gusts blew embers that ignited hillsides. That could give firefighters a chance to make more progress, but meteorologist Rich Thompson told the Associated Press the break could be short-lived.
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