Answering the call: Lakeland students protect and rebuild Jasper

When word spread among the firefighting community that a wildfire was threatening the town of Jasper, it felt personal to Shawn McKerry. The dean of Lakeland College’s Emergency Training Centre and Class of 2006 alum of the emergency services technology (EST) program has personal experience with the sort of devastation a fire like this can leave on a community. McKerry fought the fires that destroyed Slave Lake in 2011 and Fort McMurray in 2016. Jasper, though, felt different.

“It’s so important to Canada,” McKerry says. “That’s what motivated me to get out and help. But it’s more than that. The fire chief in Jasper, Mathew Conte is a graduate of Lakeland. He’s one of us, one of our people that needed our help.”

McKerry led a taskforce of his EST students to the front lines to assist in managing the wildfire and protecting whatever parts of the community they could. Together, 34 students and faculty with four fire engines answered when the Alberta Emergency Management Agency called for assistance. One crew drove through the night and the other arrived the next day, after wrapping up exams and projects in July.

This was the second such deployment for Lakeland EST students. Last year, an EST class assisted with a wildfire in Parkland County, spending three days putting out hotspots, assisting with incident command, and doing their best to minimize the damage.

“When I was a student in the program, I would have loved to have a real-world experience like this, on the scale of opportunity we’ve been able to provide for the past two years,” McKerry says.

“There’s so much room for professional and personal growth through an opportunity like this one. It changes who you are as a person and you leave as a better person – as well as a really great firefighter.”

The power of fire

As they traveled to Jasper, McKerry warned the students about the potential disaster they were walking into. The last class had dealt with a fire in a rural area with minimal structures at risk. With Jasper being an urban centre, it had the potential to be much worse.

“After Slave Lake and Fort McMurray, I was worried it would be levelled to the ground,” McKerry recalls. “So when we pulled in, I was so grateful that there was so much left. I have so much appreciation and respect for the people that fought the fire overnight while we were driving out there. I know the effort it took for them to save as much as they did.”

Even with so much of Jasper still standing, the amount of damage was still devastating to see, he says. It was an important experience for the students.

“It’s humbling when you see the power of fire, when you see a whole chunk of the town gone. It really hits you and you have a greater level of understanding for the world we’re going to be working in and the possibilities of that world. But it also emphasized the other side of that coin – firefighting is also about helping to rebuild that community.”

Lakeland was the largest work force onsite, able to split into two taskforces and work 24-hour days. The dayshift spent a lot of their time putting out hotspots and dealing with major burning areas to slow the spread of fire. At night, a crew patrolled the perimeter, working to increase the safe zone buffer between the townsite and the wildfire.

Protect and rebuild

At one point, while systematically searching for hotspots in the debris, a student noticed smoke whispering from an intact yellow house across the street. After reporting it to incident command, the group of students were deployed to investigate and mitigate as much damage to that house as they could. They found that fire had already burnt up along the side of the building and had gotten into the wall and the ceiling space.

“We knew it was somebody’s home and we could try to save it,” McKerry explains. “If we left it alone, it was ultimately going to burst into a larger fire and likely burn the house down. So we got the students over to the house, exposed a bunch of walls and roof spaces and put out the fire. The students were instrumental in making sure that there was no damage. We saved that yellow house.”

That house became a landmark to the students during the rest of their deployment and an important symbol of what it means to be a firefighter and what they were there to protect.

Being a firefighter, McKerry says, is more than just putting out the fire, however. It’s also helping to rebuild. Staff and students spent one afternoon cleaning up the main street in Jasper, putting up fences and cleaning up patios in an attempt to help get things back to normal.

“It brought a sense of control, order and pride back to the community,” McKerry explains. “It’s not just about putting water on a fire. It’s caring and taking responsibility for a community.”

When he and an instructor were sorting through the rubble of a church that had burned to the ground, they found the church’s bell buried in the debris. Together, they dug it out and set it aside carefully, already looking forward to the community rebuilding the church and reincorporating that bell into the new structure.

“Bells are an important part of the fire service world and of course they would be to a church as well,” McKerry says. “When they rebuild, they’ll have that bell for the next building. In the fire service, that would be extremely important to us, so we were glad to be able to salvage it and make sure it was safe and sound.”

Alumni helping alumni

The concept of community in the fire service is more than what they protect, however. It’s the other firefighters they work alongside, and McKerry was glad to give his students a greater understanding of the importance of that bond.

It was especially impactful when he realized just how many of the firefighters they were working alongside were Lakeland Emergency Training Centre alumni.

In addition to the fire chief of Jasper, there was also Ken McMullen, the incident commander in Hinton and president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, Class of 2012, as well as Trevor Sutherly, task force leader with Parkland County, Class of 2012. McKerry and the students ran into a number of other EST alumni from the past three or four years as well – including some who had fought the Parkland fire with McKerry last year.

“It really helped me appreciate how many people out there have Lakeland on the backs of their uniforms,” McKerry says. “Getting out there and working alongside other alumni was great. Knowing that we could set up these students to be really great alumni and ambassadors after they leave Lakeland was amazing as well.

“It’s alumni helping alumni. At Lakeland, we talk about learning in action and being ready for the real world, and that’s what this is.”