Kyle Gilson has spent nine fire seasons with BC Wildfire Service, all of them right here on mid-Vancouver Island, and for the last several years he’s led a four-person initial attack crew out of the Errington Fire Base. His job, in the simplest terms, is to get to a new fire before it becomes a big one.
I wanted to know how Kyle got into this line of work in the first place. He told me it was a photo his cousins posted of themselves standing beside a burnt-out tree up north. That was it. He applied to a contract firefighting crew, loved it, and the following year made it onto BC Wildfire Service on his first try, no small feat given how competitive the applications have become.
He walked me through the first hour after a call comes in – dispatch gives him coordinates and a rough sense of what he’s driving into, then it’s his job to assess the fire, find water, and get hose around it as fast as possible. I asked what most people get wrong about the job, expecting him to talk about the heat or the hours. Instead he told me the most underestimated part is how enjoyable it can be – the camaraderie of training and working alongside the same crew every single day.
We talked about the fires that stay with him: the 2023 Cameron Lake shutdown, fought half up a sheer cliff, and last year’s Wesley Ridge fire, the largest wildfire response in Vancouver Island’s history. He was candid about how differently island fires behave compared to the Interior – slower moving in our rainforest, but harder to fight because the trees are so much bigger.
A home properly prepared using the FireSmart Guidelines, he said, lets his crew do a quick walk-around and move on. One that isn’t creates hours of extra work with the saws.
It’s a small thing homeowners can do that makes a real difference to the people showing up on the worst day of a fire.
Hear the full conversation with Kyle Gilson on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP44PulsePodcast
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca.
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/