Community firefighters get good training at Camp Nanook

Firefighter Sgt. Michael Patey adjusts the breathing mask on Lena Ochoktoonoak, a Canadian Ranger from Taloyoak, during a professional development class at the Operation Nanook military exercise in Resolute Bay. (PHOTO BY SGT. NORM MCLEAN, CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA, DND)

Here Lena Ochoktoonoak, a Canadian Ranger from Taloyoak, uses the jaws of life to cut through a pipe, as part of professional development class, while on Op Nanook while Master Cpl. Garrett Powers watches. (PHOTO BY SGT. NORM MCLEAN, CANADIAN FORCES COMBAT CAMERA, DND)

The Resolute Bay airport usually sees more Twin Otter and ATR traffic than anything else — but during Op Nanook a variety of aircraft, including many Hercules, have landed on its long gravel airstrip. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

This tank-like P-19 fire truck, one of two at Cam Nanook, is designed to handle the hot fires of a burning aircraft. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

A group of Canadian Rangers — including some who serve as volunteer firefighters in their Nunavut communities — got a taste of airport firefighting this week when they visited Operation Nanook’s fire station.

Part of their professional development class included a tour in the snub-nosed, yellowish fire truck, with the dimensions of a tank.

That left them impressed, said Sgt. Michael Patey, the fire chief for the Op Nanook camp.

In Resolute Bay, as in many other small communities in Nunavut, there’s only two water pumpers and five volunteer firefighters.

They’d be hard-pressed to respond to a major aircraft or airport fire — the kind that the Resolute Bay airport, with its stream of aircraft of every size during Op Nanook, could experience.

So the military brought in eight firefighters, including two firefighting trucks with a combined weight of 75,000 pounds, designed to fight airport fires June 29 — way in advance of the arrival of the rest of the 400-plus members of the armed forces and Rangers now on site.

The two firefighting trucks call the camp fire station — a green huge inflated tent — home.

There, firefighters also store other equipment, such as an oxygen compressor to fill their breathing tanks, foam to extinguish fires, a jaws-of-life apparatus for cutting through metal, and all the protective personal gear they need.

There’s also a 40,000-litre plastic holding tank or bladder that can be used to refill the fire trucks’ water tanks.

Op Nanook’s fire trucks pump a mixture of foam and water, up to 6,000 litres in the larger of the two trucks. They’re also equipped with water hoses which can be used when needed.

The fire trucks can call on ultra-high pressure water, compressed air foam, and dry chemical agents, depending on the nature of the fire, to handle an airport fire where there are “high hazards,” said Sgt. Patey.

When there’s a fire on an aircraft or a crash that results in a fire, the firefighters’ goal is to make a rescue path for passengers and crew through burning jet fuel by “pumping and rolling” up to the aircraft, he said.

The first fire truck on the scene strategically shoots a blend of foam and water out strategically from a nozzle on the top of the truck.

The fire trucks, which are insulated, are designed to plow through fire if they have to, but try not to, Sgt. Patey said.

“If an aircraft has a fire, we go to the side where there is no fire to protect the vulnerable area,” he said.

And they don’t have a lot of time.

A fire on an aircraft can be intense, burning up to 1,370 C, according to a document on aircraft rescue and firefighting.

At this temperature, an aircraft’s hull can burn through in one minute, and within another two to three minutes, the inside temperature can rise to 980 C.

So, the total time from beginning of a fuel fire until conditions become lethal is three to four minutes.

This means firefighters have to arrive at an airport accident within minutes, if possible.

An Aug. 13 simulated explosion at a fuel tank near the airport tested their firefighting capacity of the Op Nanook firefighters.

But they’ve spent their days mainly doing fire prevention, such as checking emergency lights and conducting daily tours through tents to check there are any safety issues to resolve, like clotheslines strung across exits.

“Our biggest job is to prevent fire in the first place,” Sgt. Patey said.

To practice dealing with the real thing, firefighters regularly train on mock aircraft where they douse the aircraft with propane.

Military firefighters can also receive lots of additional training including emergency and search and rescue skills.

Every military airport has a dedicated rescue team composed of trained firefighters and rescue vehicles, but that standard does not apply to civilian airports in Canada

Resolute Bay hasn’t seen its own airport-based fire truck since commercial jet service stopped there in 2005.

That’s despite a large amount of traffic at the airport from chartered Twin Otters, commercial ATRs and the occasional Hercules.

In addition to the scheduled flights, about 125 flights are linked to the Polar Continental Shelf Program’s operations, mainly during the summer.

Without any scheduled jet traffic and the relatively small number of flights during most of the year, the Resolute airport isn’t obliged to keep its own fire truck on stand-by at the airport, as is the case in Iqaluit.

This means the fire trucks will be loaded back on a Hercules in September and shipped back south.

People here say they’re happy firefighters were at their airport this summer: they hope that the continued growth of Resolute Bay as a hub for military and research will eventually lead to a return of scheduled jet service — and a year-round airport firefighting presence there.