North Queensland parks ranger returns from fighting Canadian wildfires

Mr Bufi has had plenty of training in managing bushfires in northern Australia - having been with QPWS since 2016 and as the ranger in charge of Cairns South he's undertaken multiple courses, as a crew member, a crew leader, and as an incident controller - and has undertaken fuel reduction burns in coastal sclerophyll forests regularly.

He also had a three-week stint in the fiery expanses of eucalypt woodland and subtropical rainforest of the D'Aguilar National Park in the Brisbane hinterland in the Black Summer emergency of 2019.

However, the situation that confronted him and other members of Charlie-161 contingent - four fellow QPWS rangers and 15 Rural Fire Service members - in Alberta in July was beyond anything they'd experienced.

In order to qualify for the overseas service, Mr Bufi and fellow rangers - Mareeba ranger in charge Rob Miller, Gold Coast technical support ranger John Hand, Toowoomba fire ranger Tim Baker, and Gympie ranger Darrell Bell - first had to undertake a fitness test to an international standard.

It consisted of donning a 20kg weight vest and running 4.85km in 38 minutes, to replicate the amount of gear - hoses, chainsaws, fuel - they would have to carry on the fire line in Canada.

"It was called an arduous test and some days in Alberta, I though the test hadn't been arduous enough," Mr Bufi said. "We built up a lot of fatigue - there was no sightseeing."

Most of Mr Bufi's 40 days of service were spent protecting the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement in Alberta's north west, threatened by a 70,000ha fire.

While in Australia they use highly mobile gear to provide water on fire lines, the proximity of lakes in Canada means that kilometres of pipes are choppered in and run from pumps to where the fire front is.

"Each hose is 30m in length - you clip the ends and carry it around your neck," Mr Bufi said. "Each of us carried four of those, and dropped them off every 30m."

Tracked all-terrain vehicles that can cope with thick vegetation and swamps alike were also employed to cope with the Canadian forest conditions.

He and the rest of C-161 worked on the ground with around 100 people from all around the world, plus 25 aircraft, meaning good communication was a priority, and one of Mr Bufi's take-home messages.

"We worked with people from all Australian states, from South Africa, branches of the US Forestry Department, Chilean firefighters - there were close to 300 people at our camp at Keg River," he said.

"We worked alongside them but stuck to our sector, because we knew our practice.

"There were a few basic terms we had to learn. For example, what we'd call a spotover in Australia, they call a slop.

"The briefings were excellent. It's the first time I'd attended a fire of that size with multi-agencies, but everyone left knowing what the fire was doing, and what the expectations were for the day."

Mr Bufi said he and his colleagues had arrived in Canada, complete with the extra uniform and gear they'd quickly been issued with, expecting they would be working to get the fires out.

"That was quickly knocked out of us, just the sheer scale of them," he said. "The plan was to keep the fire contained and not let it jump. We were a piece of a big puzzle"

According to Al Jazeera, this year's blazes had scorched at least 15.3 million hectares (37.8 million acres) of land by August 23, nearly 10 times more than 2022.

Australia's 2019-20 Black Summer fires burnt an estimated 24.3 million hectares.

One of the many differences between fires in Queensland and Alberta is the presence of muskeg, a sphagnum bog up to a metre deep, that keeps the spark of a fire alive deep within its heart.

Unlike in Australia, where firefighters can immediately see that they've extinguished a fire, a lot more water is needed to be sure the heat source has gone out in muskeg, otherwise it springs up elsewhere, finding the lower limbs of oil-rich pine trees to feed and grow on.

Mr Bufi said the experience had definitely reinforced the importance of doing control burns.

"In Cairns, 30 tonnes of fuel per hectare is considered a high fuel load," he said. "We were working with 500t/ha in Canada. The take-home is, do the cool early season burns."

Seeing people evacuated from their homes under emergency conditions reminded Mr Bufi of times in Cairns when cyclones had caused similar amounts of damage and heartbreak.

"I really felt for them," he said.

Although they were prepared to camp, Mr Bufi and 300 others were housed in a small permanent oil and gas camp on the Keg River, which had been extended with the use of shipping container-style mini-cabins.

They spotted a lot of Canada's wildlife - bears pretty regularly, beavers at the lakes, along with moose, deer, and lynx footprints.

"How to manage them was all covered in our briefings - we were just told not to provoke them," Mr Bufi said.

He said he'd returned home with an overarching sense of pride at how Australia managed its landscapes, undertaking early season burns with the budget they were given.

They were the first rangers in Queensland's history to support an international disaster response, taking their unique bushfire management skills to where they were needed most on a global level

As a result, QPWS is now in a position to deploy rangers for future international wildfire operations on a case-by-case basis.

"It was an awesome experience," Mr Bufi said.

"It was great to collaborate with people all over the world - it's one of the best examples of global collaboration I've seen.

"I felt like we were doing something really worthwhile.

"It took its toll but I wouldn't say no if I was asked again."