'Not afraid to stay': The Canadians taking fighting wildfires into their own handsWith wildfires now widespread and frequent, some rural residents in Canada are learning how to fight the flames themselves and protect their own homes.10 hrs agoUS & Canada

When a wildfire broke out near his First Nation community in northern Ontario, Hubert Wigwas decided to stay put.

He put sprinklers on his roof to extinguish falling embers. He checked on elders in his community who also stayed behind, and he fuelled up four boats down on the lake in case they needed a quick escape.

“This is everything I’ve built in my 58 years,” Wigwas, a councillor from Gull Bay First Nation, told the BBC. “I’m just not going to run away and let it burn.”

Canada has seen some of its worst fire seasons in recent years, and experienced its most destructive on record in 2023, when blazes tore through forest land roughly the size of Syria. As of this August, more than 750 wildfires are actively burning across the country.

The intensifying wildfires have sparked a national conversation: Are there enough firefighters to battle these more challenging fire seasons? What happens when resources are stretched too thin? And how can remote communities, often closest to danger because of their proximity to Canada’s vast boreal forest, learn to live with this new reality?

Wigwas asked himself these questions when he decided to stay, even as he faces a fine of around C$800 ($570; £425) for defying evacuation orders.

Leaders of Gull Bay First Nation, also known as Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, have been urging residents to stay away since mid-July as more than 150 wildfires burn across Ontario’s northwest.

Its chief penned a letter on 29 July pleading with those who have remained to leave immediately, saying that Ontario firefighters cannot do their jobs safely with people still in their homes.

It is the same message officials across the country have been conveying in British Columbia, where around 115 fires are currently burning.

But with a wildfire 24km outside his community, Wigwas, speaking in late July, said he had yet to see fire personnel from out of town there to help fireproof properties or keep an eye out on the elders who remained.

He said it made him realise that his First Nation would benefit from setting up its own wildfire emergency response and teaching residents how to protect their own homes.

“Everybody talks about climate change, but nobody is doing something to unite the (First Nations) reserves and have a system like that set up,” Wigwas said.

Dave Bradley, a spokesperson for Ontario’s ministry of natural resources, did not address Wigwas’ claim directly, but said the province has been in “constant contact” with First Nations leaders.

He added that fire fighting resources are directed based on “fire behaviour, weather conditions and risks to communities.”

In the west-coast province of British Columbia – long the front line of Canada’s wildfire response – people are doing just what Wigwas is envisioning for his First Nation, with efforts underway to train residents of rural and remote communities how to safely respond to wildfires before out-of-town crews can arrive.

Sonja Leverkus, a wildfire researcher and specialist, said she has helped train more than 400 people in and around her community of Fort Nelson over the last three years through a firefighting group she helped start called the Northeast BC Rural Incident Management Team.

She told the BBC that her efforts are inspired by a realisation that Canada needs to change how it fights wildfires as climate change increases their frequency and intensity.

“There are not enough human beings in Canada,” she said, with the appropriate training, “to fight the fires that we have currently, especially over the last five years”.

Remote communities, where the nearest town might be hundreds of kilometres away, can sometimes be bumped down the priority list for BC firefighting crews if there are blazes threatening more populated areas, she said.

Her crew, who are primarily indigenous, have carried out prescribed burns, also known as a hazard reduction burns – a practice of setting planned, controlled blazes to remove fuels that could contribute to wildfires.

They have also helped put out smaller fires before they grow out of control using fire wagons that they purchased through fundraising and grants, sometimes arriving ahead of provincial firecrews and then working in tandem with them, Leverkus said.

When a major wildfire tore through Fort Nelson in 2024, she said she and 40 of her team members stayed behind and were hired by the province to clear flammables and support fire suppression activities.

Leverkus also organised a structural protection training course for locals to learn how to shield buildings from embers that can quickly spur fires that engulf entire towns.

“We have mechanics, we have carpenters, we have real good problem solvers,” Leverkus said. “We’re all not afraid to stay.”

Cam Allen, a 70-year-old former helicopter pilot in Fort Nelson who has previously fought fires from the air, said he recently took Leverkus’ course to learn about ground fire suppression techniques, and, more broadly, how to help if a blaze reaches his town.

He mentioned John Carr, a California man who went viral last year for staying behind and warding off flames with a garden hose during the Palisades fire, ultimately saving his home even when others around it burned down.

“It makes you wonder, if 100 people had stayed or 1,000 people had stayed behind and actually did what he did, how much more could have been saved?” Allen asked.

But not all were as fortunate as Carr during the Los Angeles fires, which killed a total of 29 people – a few of whom had, too, defied evacuation orders in order to protect their homes, even as officials urged thousands in the area to leave.

Leverkus’ group is not officially recognised by BC’s government, and what it is trying to achieve highlights simmering tensions in fire-prone regions between those who enforce evacuation orders and those who defy them.

Last week, wildfire crews in BC were forced to rescue a man when his home in the Village of Clinton was surrounded by flames, after he had refused to evacuate.

In a wildfire update on Tuesday, BC’s minister responsible for emergency management reiterated that all those who are under evacuation orders should leave.

“We may not be able to get back to you if an emergency happens,” warned Minister Kelly Greene, adding that evacuation orders are made as “a last resort to keep people and communities safe”.

Paul Kovacs, a researcher at the University of Western Ontario and director of its Catastrophic Loss Reduction Institute, said that Canada has had a lower fatality rate from wildfires despite their frequency in part because of its evacuation approach.

The stay and defend mindset, he said, “is aggressively opposed” by the academic community in Canada, as opposed to other fire-prone countries like Australia.

“In the hierarchy of what is it that you do to manage a wildfire, preservation of life is first,” Kovacs said.

Rural and remote communities can and should play an outsized role in informing officials of how best to protect their town, he said, and can do a lot of work to fire proof homes and structures. But that work, he argued, should not be done “while the fire is burning.”

A spokesperson for BC’s Ministry of Forests told the BBC that self-organised groups in rural areas can be hired temporarily by the province during an active wildfire, but only when there are no more available provincial firefighters in the area.

The ministry added that BC Wildfire’s full-time staff has increased by 56% in recent years to respond to the growing frequency of fires, in addition to seasonal staff.

Leverkus said she has been exploring ways to have her programme recognised by BC officials so that those trained through it can also help without being penalised for staying behind.

She added that safety precautions are engrained in her courses, including training on how to predict fire behaviour and mapping out at least two safe escape routes.

Not all of those who are trained want to stay back, she said, but those that do receive orders from trained crew commanders, including on when it’s time to leave.

“If people want to stay and defend, they need to understand what that means for themselves, what that means for their family,” Leverkus said.

Her goal is for the programme to one day become a blueprint that can be adopted by rural and remote communities across Canada, creating teams that can be relied on across the country.

As for Wigwas, he will be fighting his evacuation fine in court.

“If the chief and council want to charge me for saving my house, and I end up with nowhere to live, I might as well be in jail,” he said.