Front-row seat to a front-line firefighter’s work

Miguel Dubé is a front-line firefighter that responded to three wildfires in the RM of Piney in less than three days.

“I want to make sure that everybody is with me and the unit is going to be safe and come back to their families, jobs and everything else,” said Dubé, deputy fire chief of La Broquerie.

After fighting a fire from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. in Badger, it was an hour and a half till he got called to respond to another fire and help evacuees in Woodridge.

“It’s physically demanding initially, and then at the end it’s mentally demanding,” he said.

Under the flashing red lights in the firetruck, they strategize how to battle the fire.

“You want to help, and you want to do everything you can to get your mind in the right space and perform those tasks,” he said.

The wildifres in Manitoba started around mid-May.

Dubé said at one point there is over 3,000 ft of the firehouse strung around the forest, and once the fires are out, they had to be packed up, untangled, dragged out, and put back in place all in the dark after working several hours.

“Once the adrenaline is down once you’ve burned most of your energy fighting that fire you still have a big job to clean up,” he said. “It’s almost easy to go out even with little to no sleep. And the reward is the feeling we get from helping others,” he said.

Dubé protected multiple properties and had an “unconventional” but resourceful water source.

He said that the team was fortunate to have found a house with a pool, and another house with a pond with water they could use to help set up sprinklers and continue to battle the fire.

There were water bombers in the air spraying water to “knock the fire down a bit” and helicopters informing firefighters what they were seeing from an aerial view.

Dubé said it was exciting and that there was a level of enjoyment with seeing all the firefighters from many departments.

“You always leave there feeling like you could’ve done more,” he said. “A lot of us we want to help. That’s the number one reason we do this”.

The Manitoba Government declared a state of emergency due to the wildfires on May 28.

“I feel like for a lot of people it’s a bit of a struggle to get out of these adrenaline-filled situations where you can go for hours and hours and hours. Then you come back to normal life where it’s a bit slower paced,” he said.

JC Normandeau, fire chief of La Broquerie, said there were 25 calls in May.

The La Broquerie fire department remains ready to contribute to wildfire situations.