Thank you, Mr. Speaker, my apologies. Mr. Speaker, I have a return to an oral question asked by Mrs. Marie-Jewell on June 9th regarding the aircraft services used in fighting the Sahtu forest fire.
Mr. Speaker, depending on the smoke, wind and other conditions, the following resources were used to suppress the forest fire near Fort Norman and Norman Wells: four CL-215s, one DC-4, up to five helicopters, nine caterpillar tractors, nine fire crews and up to 40 extra firefighters. Mr. Speaker, in our opinion, this was the maximum number of resources we could safely deploy on this fire at one time. At one point, when conditions allowed aircraft to fly, we were circling about 3,000 feet above the fire. We watched as the five air tankers dropped a load on the fire every three minutes, helicopters moved men and equipment back and forth, and crews and caterpillars worked on the ground. This is a tremendous amount of activity to coordinate under difficult and dangerous conditions and I supported the decision not to bring in more resources.
Since the forest fire risk was extreme in other parts of the territories, we also needed to keep some resources in these areas. Fire crews were not moved out of those areas and one DC-4 remained in Hay River. As well, we issued a request for two CL-215s under the mutual aid resources sharing agreement. Since Quebec's were not available, Newfoundland agreed to provide the air tankers and they arrived in Fort Smith on June 11th. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.