Flying into forests and battling fire!

May 29, 2015 10:18 am Published by Darryn Florkewich Leave your thoughts

Hello, My name is Darryn Florkewich and I have just recently started my 4 month summer student position with Millar Western as the Helitack leader for Millar Western’s forest protection branch. The first week of my time with Millar Western consisted of an orientation period where other summer students and myself were instructed on Millar Western’s extensive history in the forest industry, Millar Western’s standard operating procedures, and the expectations for the summer along with some basic entry level certification courses for forest industry.

In the first couple weeks of my time with Millar western my supervisor Tyler Caddey explained the importance of Millar Western’s Helitack crew and how they are utilized to prevent any catastrophic events similar to the Virginia Hills fire and maintaining ecological function of the forests of Millar western’s FMA. This new responsibility motivated me to establish a new inventory for Millar Western’s fire suppresion equipment as well as utilize previously used ideas and techniques which I had learned from my previous summer as a helitack member in Lac La Biche.

With my new position with Millar Western I’ve been given the opportunity to manage a small crew consisting of myself and two other crew members which is allowing me to build on my leadership skills and mentor my crew using my previous helitack experience. In the last couple weeks we’ve been used as a fire detection resource for the Millar Western FMA and received several hours of helicopter time which I had been looking forward to all year long. In addition to our patrols we also had the chance to help suppress a wildfire which was started inside Millar western’s FMA. This provided us an interaction with ESRD fire crews and fireline experience which we feared would be lacking. All in all I feel the first couple weeks had been very beneficial to me and I am very grateful for Millar Western providing me with such a great opportunity.

Darryn Florkewich