- Canadian wildfire fighter was attacked by a mother grizzly bear while fighting the Summit Lake Fire near Fort Nelson in British Columbia.
- After he defended himself with his tools, the rest of the crew scared the bear away before any serious harm was done. He sustained minor injuries.
- Over 10 million acres have burned in Canada this year — more than 300% of a normal year — with more than 1.5 million in the region where the attack happened.
A Canadian wildfire fighter survived an attack from a mama grizzly bear last week while fighting a large burn in northeastern British Columbia.
The attack happened on July 4 around 11 a.m. while the crew was fighting the Summit Lake Fire, which burned a nearly 200,000-acre swath of forest near the very remote city of Fort Nelson. The fire is still burning, but is no longer classified as a threat due to current weather conditions.
“This encounter is a good reminder of the ever-present safety challenges faced by wildland firefighters every day,” said Emily Baker, information assistant for the Prince George Fire Center. “We will continue to ensure that our crews are trained for the realities of working in remote areas in British Columbia.”
The difficult realities that wildland firefighters face are stark well before contending with one of North America’s largest land predators. Eleven wildfire fighters died last year in the U.S. and written into the Interagency Standards for Fire and Fire Aviation Operations is the statement that “a firefighter, utilizing the best available science, equipment, training and working within the scope of agency doctrine and policy can still suffer serious injury or death.”
Wildfires generally force wildlife to flee the burning regions, with only the very young, very old and sick dying in the flames, according to the National Forest Foundation. It is the altered landscape that is often more deadly for local fauna. However, in northern Canada, it seems at least some bears are less inclined to flee in the face of fire.
In a tale that could be written for Hollywood, the wildland fire crew from the British Columbia Wildfire service flew into an area nearly 70 miles from the nearest town, Fort Nelson, where the incident management team was stationed.
There, a Ministry Zone Operation Center (MZOC), which according to Baker, “provides site support and coordinate response and resources for a defined area experiencing heavy wildfire demand,” was set up to fight the many different fires burning in the surrounding Prince George area.
Currently, 51 wildfires are active in the region, which have burned nearly 1.7 million acres. For context, 55,000 acres of Utah have burned so far this year, according to KUER. Across the entire United States, wildfires have consumed 1.2 million acres — half a million less than this one part of British Columbia.
The local news organization, Castanet, reported that Ravi Parmar, the Canadian minister of forests, said in a Tuesday news conference that, “by the end of this year, we’re estimating nearly 30% of the forested land base will have been impacted.”
That’s nearly a third of the area’s forests.
The crew leader (who has declined to be named and does not want to speak with the media) was scouting ahead of his team while they were working a piece of the fire’s perimeter. He stumbled across a mother bear and her two cubs and, “in a matter of seconds,” Baker said, the bear charged.
Defending himself with a hand tool — his pulaski, a wildland firefighting tool combining an adze and an axe — the firefighter was able to buy himself enough time for his crew to arrive and help. They “rushed to the scene, starting chainsaws and yelling to scare the bear and her cubs away,” Baker said.
The crew administered first aid until the crew leader was transported to a hospital where his injuries were treated. They were so minor, luckily, that he was released the same day.
Despite the bear attacking a human, the Canadian Conservation Officer Service (COS), which is comparable to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, investigated the incident and determined they would not attempt to “dispatch” the bear.
After interviewing the victim and witnesses, the COS concluded that the bear acted in defense and caused no life-threatening injuries. In another lucky result of a potentially tragic exchange, even the mama bear will live to fight another day.
The Summit Lake Fire is now classified as “being held” and the region is seeing a downturn in fire activity, Baker said, which the British Columbia Wildfire Services attributes to some advantageous weather and the hard work of its crews in the region.
One of those crews had an especially dangerous week. Baker said that she knows he was taken off the Summit Lake Fire itself, but does not know if he is yet back fighting fires. She said, “We are grateful that this crew leader was able to return home quickly and is in overall good spirits.”