Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we did talk to them. I've actually had, like I said, conversations with five of the -- or sorry, seven of the ten retirees. And the first thing, without even me prompting, you know, I just asked them why, and they said because we knew the season was going to be bad. We had an individual in Fort Smith who was retired and saw the situation and he already, before the evacuation, was getting ready to leave. When the officers -- the regional office superintendent reached out to him and asked he said, yeah, let's get to her. And he said look, it was a severe drought, the weather conditions, he said fires didn't act the way they normally do. And he said that the work that these people put their lives on the line and, unfortunately, we did lose one firefighter and we had a number of people injured, these people were fighting the fire situation that was different. We will be engaging them with our after-action review plan because this was very knowledgeable. They had some of them 40 years of experience, and they've said they could not ever see this situation as bad as it was. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Shane Thompson on Question 1631-19(2): Wildfire crew Staffing and Deployment
In the Legislative Assembly on October 6th, 2023. See this statement in context.
Question 1631-19(2): Wildfire crew Staffing and Deployment
Oral Questions
October 6th, 2023
Page 6878
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