Wildfire service adds night flying in the Cariboo
Two helicopters, night-vision certified, will work the hours when fires lie down and crews used to wait for dawn.
The wildfire service will fly at night in the Cariboo this season, basing two night-vision-certified helicopters at Williams Lake for the fire zone where the tactic's trial ran last summer.
The logic is the diurnal cycle every fire crew knows: fires lie down after dark as temperatures fall and humidity recovers. Those are the best suppression hours of the day, and until now they were spent waiting for legal daylight. The trial put bucket work on fires between midnight and four a.m. and held two of them at sizes the day shift could finish.
Night flying in mountain terrain is not free of cost or risk, which is why the program stayed a trial for two seasons of certification work — terrain databases, illuminated dip sites, and a crew-rest regime that the pilots' association negotiated line by line. The service's aviation lead called the sign-off "the most conservative expansion we have ever done, on purpose."
The Cariboo gets the program first because its fire regime suits it: big diurnal swings, long road access for ground support, and a fire centre with two seasons of the paperwork already done. If the season cooperates — a phrase nobody in Williams Lake says without touching wood — the service intends to certify a second base in the southeast next year.
