Shaun Newman Podcast - #698 - Von Schmidt

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

He owns and operates Fortress Construction, a heavy oilfield construction business, he’s a former volunteer firefighter and HAC (Helicopter Attack Crew) team member. We discuss Alberta’s natural disasters (forest fires) and the need to create new ways to support urban interface such as developing a new volunteer group to support. Urban interface is where wildlands and urban development overlap. Clothing Link:⁠⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Vance Crowe. This is Tom Longo. This is Drew Weatherhead. This is Marty Up North. This is J.P. Sears. And you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday.

How's everybody doing today? Tews pointed this out on the mashup, okay? We're going to start with Silver Gold Bowl. Of course, Alberta made at a Rocky Mountain House. Now they're North America wide. He pointed this out on the mashup. When you're buying things from Silver Gold Bowl, don't just, I wish I had two is here to explain this.

Don't just reference as you bought by to Silver Gold Bowl, S&P. But if you reach out to S&P through the show notes, text, email, Graham, and you reference to Silver Gold Bowl that your Sean Newman podcast listener, not only does it go down as referencing me, but you also are going to get a cheaper price. I don't know. Maybe Tuesday is right. Maybe I haven't said that enough.

What do I know? Regardless, Tuesday called me on it on Mashableness. 121 on Friday. So if you have been buying Silvergold from Silvergold Bull and have just been making reference of it, it doesn't automatically get you a cheaper price. But if you go through Graham, text, email, they can find you deals that normally wouldn't get and obviously say a Sean Newman podcast listener. And so that's Monday.

News alert. If you're buying from there, make sure you reference SNP and do it through Graham so you get better pricing just for you, the listener of this show. Silvergoldbull.ca.com, depending on the country. That's where you go. And that's a news release from Tuse himself as he clinked coins on the last mashup and was yelling at me because he's like, hey, dummy, SMP helps out with pricing as well. Cal Rock, your trusted partner in surplus oil field equipment, leading supplier of new

used and reconditioned oil field production equipment in Canada. But that's not all. Tank fabrication, new and refurbished fluid storage tanks. trucking, pump jacks, and demolition. That's calrock.com. Profit River, they got their customer appreciation day on September 21st this year here in Lloyd Minster at their Lloydminster location, and they'll have lots of sales, giveaways, barbecue lunch, manufacturer reps in store.

Going to be a big day. That's September 21st. So if you're in and around the Lloydminster area, make sure you stop into Profit River on customer appreciation day. That's September 21st. Of course, they're the major retailer of firearms, optics, and accessories. They serve all of Canada, so no matter where you're sitting, just go to Profitriver.com. Doesn't matter if you're in none of it or in Newfoundland or sitting here in Alberta.

Make sure you head on over to Profitriver.com. They can get you hooked up and their customer appreciation day, September 21st. Carly Clas and the team over Windsor Plywood, they are the builders of all things here in the studio when it comes to wood. We're talking the podcast. studio table and you know deck season has been honest for quite some time and I'm uh I'm in the process of uh I'm about to go do some things with some chunks of wood and I am going to be stopping into Windsor plywood because when it comes to wood and you want character wood you want the best quality of wood don't look any farther than Windsor plywood and if you're in Lloydminster you make

sure you stop in and ask for Carly he's he's the man over there and when it comes to mantles decks windows doors or sheds they got some cool stuff that you can work with. So make sure you reference, Carly, make sure to stop in to the Lloydminster location and get your chunks of wood that you're looking for. Okay, some things here on the podcast that I think I need to be brought up. First, substack, been talking about it every week since I've been back,

that, you know, we're working on some things here with Sunday nights. We have the week in review, so that was posted on Sunday night. So that's last night. So if you didn't see that video, make sure you go subscribe to the substack. I'm not blowing anything up here. You know, I'm not the guy that's going to send you three emails a day. I'm going to say that right now. I want to make sure that whatever I'm sending you actually matters.

And so if you were going, okay, well, what's been on substack then recently? Anything through the summer? Well, we were gone for the 46 days. That's the trip. We put things in the notes there. We had pictures go up and some different places we visited. Some of the people we found along the way. Before that was in April.

the Cornerstone Forum and its entirety is up so you can go watch all of that and see what was happening. And as we move forward, we're going to be doing some different things on there to hopefully pull some people over to substack. It's free to subscribe to. Of course, it is the one place where if you become a paid member, you're sporting independent media. And it is the one place you can do it here on the podcast. I don't have any other things set up. So that is where you want to go if you're interested in such a thing. The other thing, Friday, November 29th, that is going to be the SMP Christmas party here in Lloyd Minster.

I'm bringing the dueling pianos to the Gold Horse Casino. And if you're a company in town or in the area and you're interested in purchasing tables, I'd like you to shoot me a text in the show notes. You can see my number, just a firemane text. We can talk through what that looks like. But that is Friday, November 29th. I know. It's too early to start talking Christmas.

Everybody has been talking to me about that. But I want to get ahead of this, and I got the dueling pianos coming in for two nights. And the first night is, or the 30th, Saturday is already sold out. So the Friday, that is what is left. So Friday, November 29th, dueling pianos at the Gold Horse Casino. If you're interested, text me in the show notes. And one more thing that I want to do, I was talking to Vance Crow about this, because obviously he does legacy interviews.

And once upon a time, I did a version of the legacy interviews. It used to be called the Family Tree. and the Family Tree Project, and then I did the archive interviews and et cetera. And I don't, what I want to do, folks, is I want to do five of them before Christmas. I don't have time or maybe the energy or maybe both because I want to give them all I have when I'm sitting down with one of your loved ones and make sure it's something that you're proud of and that, A, when it goes out, or maybe an addition when you go out at Christmas, you have something that the family can look at for a long time afterwards and go,

that was something. So I'm going to do five of them. So if you're interested in being one of the five, or you have a family member that you think that you'd like to get recorded, and you were looking for details, just fire me a text once again. I'm hoping that my phone blows up Monday morning. And I'll watch you through the details, and then it's just, you know, more or less trying to figure out if there's a fit there.

And I'm only going to do five of them. I've kind of decided if, you know, I just can't handle any more than that. And I'd like to do some of them for Christmas. It seems around Christmas it gets brought up. So we're going to be well in advance to that. So if you're looking for a legacy interview here in the area, let me know. And we'll see what we can put together there. Okay, that's everything I got for you today.

Let's get on to that tale of the tape. He's a business owner. He owns Fortress Construction, a heavy oil-filled construction business here in Alberta. he's a former volunteer firefighter and helicopter attack crew team member. I'm talking about Von Schmidt. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to Sean Newman podcast.

Today I'm joined by Von Schmidt. So, sir, thanks for hopping in. Thanks for having me. It's a fantastic, you know, it's nice to come out and actually sit down in the studio. It's a great opportunity. How, where do you get a name of Von Schmidt? I feel like that. Let's start there.

That's a great name. Well, it was very German. It's actually a part of my full name, which is Samuel Robert Vaughn Schmidt. But somewhere along the way early on, I started going by Vaughn and that one kind of stuck. So it's kind of funny when somebody calls me by my name, my full name, I quite often don't know who they're talking to him, looking around over my shoulder for the Samuel guy. But knowing that just growing up in the northern part of the province. And what's the northern part of the province?

Well, uh, grew up in Calling Lake, which is north of Athabasca. Um, mom and dad moved up there in the late 70s, I think. And then, uh, started a family up there and being of small community, they were involved in everything. And, uh, you know, the fire department was a big part of what they did up there when in the, in the 80s and 90s and I, that frick, I think I was on there. Got kind of looped into that when I, before I could even drive, I was on the fire department. And, you know, spring, spring. spring fire season is always a little bit of an adventure, any part of the province. It's a bit of an adventure in the springtime. So, you know, early around, you're stomping around in the bush, putting out grass fires

and stuff. And, you know, grew up there, homeschooled for a while, and then into Athabasca for high school. And then from there, moved on to other adventures in life. Did a season with Alberta HeliTac. And moved into the aviation world from there and did a couple of seasons. White Court with airborne energy and the just as a maintenance deck. And then later on, I moved into the second chapter life and got back into construction. So I've owned a construction company now full time.

But that was kind of the long, long way around. And so now we're, you know, that keeps me busy most of the time. It's just, you know, running a running business and family and kind of trying to stay on top of all of that. stuff is pretty much a full-time job. So what is it, you know, like I was saying to you, sure to Marty up north for, for putting us in contact together, you know, how this all starts, I think, and maybe you can fill in some of the blank spaces that maybe I don't know, you know, is, is it's, it started by, I think, having a Jasper Wildfire roundtable. And I'm not saying it was mine. I'm saying in general, these started happening because they're like, okay, we keep

having wildfires. Yeah. Is this the nefarious plot of the WEF and some form of energy space laser to basically burn us into oblivion? Or is there another factor in here that people need to start to understand? So people started having round tables, you know, I showed out to Wogpog. That's where I first ran into a Twitter space that had Liam Parfit and James Stadel. I hope I'm saying that right.

and then Marty up north. And the reason I followed him in was because it was Marty up. I was like, oh, this is interesting, right? I was sitting in the States. And I started listening to it. I'm like, this is interesting. Like I haven't heard any of, you know, when it comes to thinning of the forest and and different things that obviously now people on the podcast have heard.

And then Marty, after being a part of that conversation, pass me along your name. And I don't know what pieces I'm missing in there, but by all means, fill it in for me. Well, I think it's kind of one of those, like those conversations. just kind of happens over a cup of coffee or, or, you know, around the table or, you know, the, what I've often said is that, you know, Florida has hurricanes. Alberta has wildfires. And that's just been the way it has been forever. You know, that's our natural disaster every spring for about a month and a half or two. Somebody's little town almost burns down. But it's, you know, kind of been in the background for a long time. It wasn't until Slav Lake burnt down that all of a sudden is like, holy shit, like these things are, you know, pretty serious. And, um, um, Is there a reason why it was in the background? Like were we doing a better job previous or is there things that have started to change? Well, as it turns out, that's a long story. It goes back.

There's a, you know, I think the, I think that forest firefighting services kind of got started around the, you know, the late 1895 until 1910 era. I'd have to double check that. but there was a little clip it out of a newspaper article. Can you pull that mic read into you? Sure. How's that? Yeah. You can just hear it immediately.

It's better. Oh, okay. Perfect. How's that? Yeah. Good. So yeah, around that time, there was, I was just reading an article that was just a little clip it out of there, but it talked about like the, uh, this disastrous fire that, you know,

blew through three million hectare acres of land in northern Montana and in Idaho and Washington State in two days. And it was a, you know, huge disaster. but it was from 1910. And at that time, you know, they, everybody got together and said, we have to do something about this. We got to get on these fires. And so that, that's where the, you know, firefighting, you know, wildlands firefighting

kind of came from. And then they, they got really good at it, you know, over the last, you know, 75 years. We've had some pretty fantastic, um, firefighting services like they, the heli-tack crews, the initial attack crews, the, you know, smoke jumpers in the States. Like, these guys are all heroes that really took their job seriously. And they got really good at putting out fires. Um, but what happens there is you have a boreal forest that normally burns, you know, before we got in there and started putting them out all the time, you know, every, I don't

know, 25, 30 years you have some big fires to go through and clean everything up. And what that normally had is you had forest systems that had, you know, big old trees and low ladder fuel content. So, you know, you had fires all the time, but they just weren't that intense. and then over, you know, every couple decades or something like that, every hundred years, you'd have a major fire event, you know, it's usually supported by weather, you know, they get some really hot, dry weather, you know, dries out all the fuel that's there. And when it burns, it burns really intensely. But since the 19, you know, really part of the 19th century there, I guess it, uh, we haven't

had any of those major fires. Like they, they've, they've, have them here and there. But most of the time they're in the background, you know, off of the bush, where nobody lives and they let those fires burn because there's nothing of significant value there to put out. And, you know, most of the time residential areas are guarded very well. And so those forests are allowed to grow pretty big and pretty dense. And Liam talked about that on your previous podcast. The amount of the density that these forests have is getting or has gotten pretty extensive.

You know, they, you know, they've 100 plus years of growth with very little. little burn over, a very little thinning. And, uh, the, the fuel loading that there is excessive. So to say that it's, you know, space lasers burning things down or is due to global warming is definitely oversimplifies a very complex issue. Very complex problem. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of funny.

Leah mentioned something, um, about like the, the native communities that lived in around Jasper, how they used to burn regularly. And I remember that in calling like when I was, young, you know, on the fire department every spring, you know, there'd be three or four guys like clock work, like in the spring, they're out there light and grass fires burning shit down. They do it. It pisses everybody off. You're like, what the fuck are you doing out there? They're burning shit down. Like, don't you know, you're going to catch everything out for it. But they knew, you know, because they've done it for generations. Like in the springtime,

you burn off the grass, underbrush so that later on you don't have this big fire risk in the hot summer. So, but that's been, you know, kind of pushed in the background and, and, you know, that practice has been kind of quashed or suppressed, I guess, over the years in favor of, you know, big majestic old growth forests of, you know, lots of biodiversity. And they've been, you know, you know, it's great to have these big stands of, of ancient trees. But before we showed up, they burnt very regularly. And we, we did stop that, which has kind of created this. We've kind kick that can down the road. I love reading the old stories of this area, right?

Where I sit of the settlers who came here and we got a old book, Fort Pitt Trails and it's stories from my area. Yeah. And there's stories in there about the fire, like fire was a reason people left because it ran faster than the fastest horse. The grass fires. It jumped the creeks. It jumped everything and burned everything.

And that's, you know, like less than 100 years ago. Well, actually, I shouldn't say that. Somewhere between 100 and probably 120 years ago, these stories were commonplace for the people who came and settled this area where I sit. Yeah, you know, absolutely. And like I said, over the last, I would say that's probably one of the, in my opinion, probably one of the larger contributing factors is the how well we've put out fires over the last, probably 75 years, you know.

One of the repercussions being good at stopping disaster is eventually it builds up to really brutal disaster. Yeah. Yeah. And definitely around urban like there's other, you know, out in the bush where there's very little infrastructure, it's not that critical to let them burn. They, you know, rip through great swaths of trees and, you know, for the most part, the worst that it happens is we get a smoky summer that kind of cuts in on our, you know, sunny days kind of thing. But what the disaster is is when those, those forests are on top

of a small community, um, it creates a massive, of risk, you know, because that when the fire weather kind of lines up, you know, you get the dry hot stretches and you plus 30 days and those hot dry winds that blow, there's very few resources that are capable of slowing down or even putting out one of those big fires when there's that much fuel to burn and the weather is just right. And, you know, that's where you found seen with Slave Lake. When Fort McMurray burnt down the same thing. Like those, those fires come in with such ferocity there's almost nothing you can do you can you're not going to put the fire out you know maybe with the right equipment in the right places you might stop it from burning things that you want to

keep but you're not you're not putting it out you know you know that's uh you know when it comes to the something like that it's the hand of god territory like you need you know monster rainstorms and and you need the weather to change essentially you know that's what holds them up is fire weather So that's, um, that's one of the things that I think that a person has to kind of shift away from in the whole conversation is you're not going to stop them. You know, the fuel is there. Um, the foresters like Liam and and guys like that, they're, you know, do a lot of their work to thin those out. Um, if they get the opportunity like around Jasper, they were doing a lot of good work there. And those foresters have got a really good perspective on what, you know, with a healthy, safe forest, they're in there all the time. So they've got a really good perspective on it as opposed to, you know, some of the, you know, I guess more influential types that's been more time in an office setting and, you know, studying things from afar. You know, like the guys that are in there in equipment, you know, in the forest every day, either they're cleaning up after wildfires go through.

So they got a really good perspective on what burns. and what didn't burn or, you know, they've got a really hands-on. It's a disconnect between, you know, you can not disagree. Well, you can disagree for sure, but maybe I won't say it the proper way. But it's a disconnect once again by boots on the ground, the blue collar. The people in there in the thick of things going, well, why don't we just change a couple things? And then the bureaucracy in between to get to the person who can actually make the decisions, but you have to jump through all the hoops.

Exactly. You know, you go back to Liam in talking about thinning. Yeah. You know, most of the public doesn't even hear that. Like, it was the first time I heard that idea. Or at least in a sense where I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess I never really thought about it, right? Like, you just see what's a healthy forest, one we don't touch. And that's not exactly right, right?

Like, there has to be some interaction there to keep it from becoming. And I think I understand this, where it, you know, It becomes where it is a giant disaster waiting to happen. That's right. Yeah. And the season that I was with hell attack was kind of an off season. It was really wet that year. So I didn't get to do very much fire line stuff.

It was by the time I got out of the Hinton Training Center, the spring season was kind of over in the Lacklewish area. And those June rain started to show up. So we didn't get to actually go spend much time on the fire line. And, but that was the season of Pine Beetles kind of rolled in. and that was, I don't know, those 2005 or 2006. I can't remember, you know, or maybe even before that old four, maybe. But, yeah, we were, we were really busy with, you know, what they were, they were trying to figure how to deal with these pine beetles coming in.

So we were trying all kinds of things. We had, you know, I don't know how many 100 hack crew guys out in the bush behind Grand Cash slashing and burning these pine beetle stands. And I think it was kind of like trying to hold back the tide, you know, there, we were not very effective out there. We burned a lot of, a lot of jet fuel and, you know, flew around a lot in helicopters and burnt down a lot of trees, but it didn't really stop the pine beetles from coming into the province.

And since then, you see these great big swaths of old, you know, old pine trees and Jasper especially, you know, turned orange over the years. And that one just turned into, you know, a disaster waiting to happen. And, you know, there wasn't a lot that there wasn't really a policy in place for that, which is I think one of it, something everybody struggles with is like, well, there's no, no playbook for that because it hasn't happened before. So that's where everybody was kind of sitting on their hands. They knew how bad it was, but nobody really wanted to, you know, get in there and start ripping the forest part with heavy equipment because it's national park. And then you talk about the bureaucracy and yeah, there's, there's layers and layers of that on, on both sides in between, because parks are federal.

And the provinces would like to do something about it and the feds would like to do something about it. but they, you know, for them to, you know, come up with a clear path is, you know, time consuming. And it was easier just to ignore it as, you know, and, and then I think the whole idea about, like, trying to stop wildfires is, is something that, you know, everybody's like, well, let's just get bigger water bombers or, you know, let's get more people out there. But like Liam was saying with those, when they're really big, like that, you can't put people in front of them. Like you can't, you can't send dozers out in front of fires like that. You can't send fire. firefighters out in front like it's just way too dangerous and you know there isn't you know like the

fire and jasper there um you know they're guys guys saying that's you know creating its own weather which they absolutely do and you know when it gets really bad like that you can't have you know bomber groups in there just flying sorters on it all day long because if it's if it's that dangerous i mean they're on a great day they're already flying their aircraft exceptionally close to the um operational windows of what that they can do. So when you get worse weather on top of that for them to just throw more resources that it doesn't really work. You know, you've got a lot of really talented people out there working and they're already,

you know, kind of maxing out their capacity. And then you get bad weather on top of a bad forest and then it's, it is a disaster. The way you explain it and I don't know if I've ever really thought about it or maybe just, you know, I've been fortunate enough in my life to never. be in front of it is it kind of like, I always think like hurricane, hurricane season. You know, it's like, you know, if you aren't prepared for it, when it comes, you know, you aren't going to run out in the middle of a storm and try and do a bunch of things. You prepare well before it because you know what's coming back around every year.

Yep. And can you have more severe storms than less severe storms? Certainly. Yeah. But if you don't prepare for it, then you're going to be caught with your pants down essentially. And then, you know, you're kind of stuck with scrambling in the middle of a giant storm and how much can you really do and how much human life are you going to put in danger of said storm. And when you put that over to wildfire season, you're like, well, listen, it's coming back every year. This isn't disappearing. Now, how extreme it is can vary. We have another year to prepare for next year when the wildfire season comes. Yeah. Yeah, that was a big thing with when Slave Lake burnt down. It was kind of a surprise. It was like, okay,

Holy shit. Like, you know, we can lose a, you know, big chunk of a community. And I wasn't up and involved with that, but I did have some friends. But it's a surprise to today's people, I should say, because, you know, like, even in Lloydminster's history. Yeah. It's burnt down before. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't think this is new to human history, a city burning down. But in, but in our world, we think, oh, it won't get us. And then, and then Slave Lake happened. Yeah. Yeah, it's, we are, as humans, we have extremely short memories. Yes, we do. Yeah. We had, you know, it's a, you know, even with floods and stuff like that, like you, you know, 100 years ago, nobody, nobody built on a flood plane because it was a flood plane.

So like there's a little, a little outpost on the shoulder of the, uh, Athabasca River just by calling like where the old telegraph office wasn't. And there's a nice big flat spot right down on the river. And they had, uh, they had their pens and their barn down there. but the house in the telegraph office was perched halfway up the bank on this dumb little shoulders probably a huge pain in the ass to build up there but they did because down on the bottom was a floodplain but we don't even follow that kind of stuff nowadays i mean it's you know there's a chunk of flat dirt there some developers going to put a house on it so short memories you know i was uh so this is i bring this episode off up often i you know it's one of my one of the episodes i

It seems to stick in my brain, and it was Judy Reeves. She survived the perfect storm, right? The Halloween gale back in 93, 92. I forget what it is, folks. Regardless, she was on a fishing boat out in 100 foot waves, and you get the point. When I interviewed her, they were in the process of building their house out on Vancouver Island. And I'm forgetting the port they were in. But regardless, she was walking me through, they're building it and whatever.

And she's like, yeah, we built here because. there's the floodplain. And, you know, you can't even, I'm like, what? She's like, well, if a tsunami comes through the valley, which will happen, whether it's in my lifetime or at some point in the future, it'll happen again. She goes, you know, like, Tafino is done. So anybody who's out there is screwed. They're dead.

Yeah. I'm like, okay. She's like, so we pick this one because you got these rock walls from the mountains and you come through this valley. And where the water gets up to is right there. I'm like, really? She's like, yeah. And there's a woman who's been trapped in one of the worst storms. in my lifetime, right?

Obviously, been very popularized by the Andrea Gale going down in the George Clooney Mark Wahlberg movie, right? And she was out in that storm on a Chinese fishing vessel and gets tugged back to shore in the middle of 100 foot waves with no steering, right? Like you can imagine you look at the world just a smidge different.

Yeah, absolutely. And when they were building their house, I remember pointing it out to me and I'm like, how the heck would you even know that, right? Like, I mean, that would take a little bit of research, probably not as hard to figure out as we think. But when you go short memories, it's like, yeah, we don't think about that.

that. No, no, that's right. It's, you know, everybody's always a forward, you know, best case scenario thinker for the most part, which is, you know, to our benefit. But, you know, when it comes to wildfires and stuff like that, like I said, I think the steering the conversation away from let's put them all out is not, not beneficial to anybody because like I said, it doesn't help anything. So the, uh, the forest firefighting services is doing a fantastic job of managing them out in the bush and initial attack crews are fantastically well equipped and trained. and they got, I mean, they got a pretty big task. And, you know, when it's busy, they are busy. But, you know, to, to stop a community from burning down, I think takes, you know, a lot more than just relying on your local fire department and assuming that SRD is going to put the fire up before it gets to town. So that, that's, I think, where, you know, just armchair, you know, observation, so to speak over the last couple of years, you know, like I said, when Slave leg burned down, I can, kind of was surprised and, you know, chatting with some of my buddies were involved in that, uh, you know, went up to help with that fire. Um, so, you know, a big part of that was evacuations are always challenging and a big thing like that too. So, you know, kind of, you know,

some lessons learned out of a slave lake for sure. But then when Fort McMurray burnt down, that was kind of a surprise. Um, you know, we were working up in the area. Um, my company was working up in, in Conklin at the time. And, uh, we had some friends that were working on doing the same type of work, but they were right in Fort McMurray on another project. And we were going to ran up to Anzac for some beers. We're going to meet for supper and some beers. And so we left Colin Clinton to drive up on 881. And our buddy's met drove over from Anzac. And I remember going up the highway and we kind of went over a little bit of a hill and you can kind of suddenly get a little bit of the western northern western skyline. And like this massive cloud. And you know, initially I thought

maybe there's a big thunderstorm rolling in, but you kind of closer and you're like, Geez, that's not a cloud. That's like, that's the fire that's coming into Fort McMurray because we'd heard about it, but you know, really get a grasp of it. They didn't have the, uh, fire apps and stuff at the time. And so we got up to Anzac and, and sitting down for supper with our buddies and I said, like, God, you guys, what are you guys still doing in town? That's a fucking biggest fire I've ever seen in my life.

And it's right on top of you guys. And there was like zero concern. Like, no, you know, they're, you know, it's not going to jump the river. It's north. You know, it's on the, on the, on the, I guess it's the west side of the river. And, you know, they've evacuated a couple of the. of communities on that side of town and there's some guys on standby but nobody's really worried about it so you're like okay well yes fair enough the experts have spoken um so we you know had our

supper and our beers and carried on home and um yeah it was like two days later it's like the third day or something there's just like pandemonium and everybody's melting their headlights out trying to get out of town so I think it's you know kind of a general public acceptance of where the risk is in your community. And they're all different too. Like Fort McMurray was extremely high risk at that time. Uh, since then, you know, their, their urban interface game is on point. Fort McMurray.

Fort McMurray. Oh yeah. They have got some proper gear now and they like the community takes it very seriously. Um, yeah, like if that whole situation is kind of rolled over again, I, I doubt they they would have lost any houses at all. Like I said, they, they've got some pretty top notch gear up there now. When you say top notch gear, what do you mean? Well, it's a lot of the, like the urban interface equipment and stuff that's available.

I mean, it's been around for a long time, but it's like the sprinkler systems, the, you know, the drop tanks, sprinkler systems, you know, water management systems, just about getting, um, you're, and I guess the leading edges of your exposures or your structures that are going to be exposed first, um, you know, getting enough moisture on them ahead of time so that they're not readily available to burn. And I think that's kind of one of the assumptions is that like in a grass fire or a small fire, like it's a wall of fire that just kind of rolls in and catches something on fire. But in one of those really big fires like Liam was talking about, it's the fire could be a kilometer away or more. And it's huckin baseball sized chunks of burning embers or pine cones or just a swirl of little firebrands that are, you know, they kind of collect on the corner of your porch and, you know, catch that on fire up on your eaves or in the corner if you've got a, you know, a cedar shake roof. And, you know, these little embers all kind of gather up and then light up. And that could be, I said, a kilometer away from where the fire is actually burning. And so if the areas you don't want burnt, um, if you can get them saturated enough ahead

of time, the odds of those little spot fires, you know, catching a town on fire or burning down something of values, you know, quite a bit better. So that's where we were kind of talking about, um, you know, having some group that is, you know, kind of geared up to focus on the, the setup for this equipment because that's one of the pieces that kind of gets missed is, um, you know, like when these fires come into town, they got several days of heads up. Normally they, you know, Jasper was fast. Like that one's gone, goodness.

that one was that three days or something from when it was discovered in march to the fire to when it rolled into town like that one was really quick but i mean it's still enough time if you have enough people available and if you have enough urban interface equipment available you probably could get you know a third of that town guarded very well and when i'm talking about urban interface equipment um there's a company uh um as rach uh fire services and he's, you know, has these kits available for sale and mostly specifically to like municipalities or or industry groups. Because they're very, very well set up and top notch quality equipment, fairly expensive, but they are probably some of the, you know, nicest setups. But there's a bunch of other companies that have them as well, like WASP. I mean, Rick, if you really want to go cheap, you can go to Canadian tire and get some inflatable swimming pools and some sprinklers and stuff like that.

And that, you know, leap your, your head and shoulders above, you know, just walking away from your house and hoping and praying that, you know, somebody's going to come by and, you know, put out the hotspot or, you know, put your fire, put your house out. And if it does catch on fire, if you can get sprinkler set up, if you can get them running and soaking down your yard in your house, you know, a couple of days before that fire rolls in, you, you, uh, you increase the chance of, you know, having a house to come back to exponentially. So that's one thing that, you know, a person could focus on for sure. But the thing is, is you can't just take all of that responsibility and dump it on one group. Now, who's going to pick up that amount? Because it's quite a bit, you know, like one of those urban interface kits can probably do four or five, maybe 10 houses or something like that, depending on how big it is. And of course, you need people to come in and set them all up, set the drop tanks up. And then, you know, getting, you know, water to them is usually not too big.

big a deal, you know, like in the event of Jasper, there's lots of water trucks rolling around. The resources are there, but getting the infrastructure set up takes a bit of legwork. So your, your idea then is there's a big fire. It's coming into, you know, I'm, we'll, we'll pick on Fort McMurray or jazz. Well, whatever, Jasper. Yeah. You have the, you're, you're saying the government has the infrastructure and they roll it in fast.

Well, I think, private companies have the infrastructure and they roll it in fast. Are you saying that if you're in, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be a volunteer group or something like that because of the scale and size that you would need. I don't think our, I don't think our provincial government, you know, wants to have another arm that's dedicated. I don't know. We want to not. I was going to say, like the group, like, I'm, I'm an advocate for smaller government and less taxes. I don't want them, you know, starting up another multi-billion dollar arm of the government. Well, actually, the one thing about the forest fires. I forget if I read this for talking. about this, but one of the things, and maybe we've got said on the podcast, forgive me folks, but regardless, is that

you know, like, it's easy to get money after this forest fire is growing. It's like a bottomless pitch, just keep throwing money at it and, you know, like that'll make it disappear. But beforehand it's a way different beast, right? Yeah. And, uh, you know, and here we sit. And so you're,

you're talking about then having a call to arms almost of like a volunteer firefighter program where there's a bad. forest fire going into Fort McMurray. Yeah. And all of a sudden, a thousand people descend upon Fort McMurray and set up a bunch of things and, and all of a sudden, you know, what you didn't think could happen happens

in a 24 hour period. Yeah. And the model that looks like, Alberta Search and Rescue's got a fantastic model. Like I, you know, they've got, they got the playbook. They have, um, it's not like I said, you can't take this plan and put it on top of their plan because they're already pretty busy. These are all volunteer people that have signed up to do something. So you can't like add to their mandate.

You can't take this over to a local fire department be like, hey, here's a new set of responsibilities. You know, I think I think it would have to be a standalone group of like a new volunteer group that it would need to be somewhat attached to a commission group or something like that through the government because one of the big things that like in Jasper on an evacuation notice, you have to have a commission group that because they have to be allowed to. come in behind in evacuated area. That's where, you know, with, when the fires were going through Wildwood, we heard lots of reports of people that wanted to show up with equipment to help. They wanted to roll in there with water trucks and, you know, their, their own gear and volunteer, but they're not allowed to because they are, you know, essentially just kind of on their own and they are not part of a sanctioned organization.

So the RCMPs and the sheriffs that are tasked with getting everybody out have to kick them out. It's not their fault. That's what they're supposed to do. So having a sanctioned group of people that can come in and assist with evacuation can assist with setting up urban interface equipment. And the other big one is evacuation support, like walking up to somebody's door and saying, hey, you know, the fire's, you know, going to be here in two days. Do you need some help evacuating? Do you need some suggestions on what to take with you?

So having that connection is probably pretty important, whereas as opposed to the RCMP walking up on your door and saying, get out in five hours, otherwise we're going to drag you out. Am I right in thinking what you're talking about is instead of like a military reserve, like a fire reserve? Almost, I would say, yeah, like I said, it would be like the, I like the search and rescue model because, you know, you're not committed to it in any vast quantity. Well, when I, when I think about it realistically, you're signing up for a month of the year where you're kind of on call loosely.

Yeah. Like all of a sudden, the worst tragedy hits, out, out you go. Yeah. I would say it would be similar to that. Like the, the, the training is fairly simple. Um,

it's available, you know, like there's, there's companies that can come into the small organizations like your ag society or your, you know, your local fire department and do urban interface training. Um, and then,

you know, like I said, the resources are readily available. Um, it's just about getting the organization set up and the connection, you know, you know, kind of the,

the network in place. And then, you know, with, uh, with the, with the, company or with a group like search and rescue like when there is an event they can they can

round up 30 or 40 people you know within a you know 24 hour to 30 hour period they can get a really talented group of people together to respond to an event and that's what I think we need to kind of lead into with this with this urban interface problem that we have in the province is that you know when there's a big fire that's rolling in you know the forestry's already maxed out on their capacity. They don't have more resources to throw at it. The, uh, the fire department is also, you know, they're typically very maxed out as well. So you need, you need an influx of, you know, readily available, well trained and well equipped people, but, you know, again, you only need them for, you know, a couple of weeks out of the year when these, you know, when these, you know,

stretches of bad weather roll through. And, you know, like I said, Alberta is, you know, that's our natural disaster is, you know, fires. And every spring is, you know, it kind of, it repeats itself. And there's good years and bad years. Like, you know, we'll go through three or four pretty mild seasons where there's some bushfires in the spring and things are pretty quiet. But then, you know, you get that, you know, two or three weeks, a hot, dry weather and in July and August and all of a sudden, the whole province is on fire like right now. And that cycle is pretty normal. But I think what in the last couple of years we've seen is the, uh, the amount of readily burnable fuel that's right on top of the community's doorstep is, is kind of reaching a climax, so to speak.

And, um, and then of course, social media helps. Like, there's so much better coverage of these things happening. You know, it's not just a foot new in, uh, you know, local newspaper. I know, I know, I know part of the frustration and you, you brought it up is like, you know, if a fort, well, it wouldn't be a fort. It'd probably be more of a bush slash grass fire out here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I think you'd have a really hard time telling farmers. I'm not pulling my equipment out to try and help. And the frustration I've heard from people in BC, specifically last year, was they were trying,

they already knew what to do when it came to their house or different spots. And then, you know, the cops were allowing them through. Yeah. So when you go to, once again, Fort Mac, right, or you're going to drive to Jasper to help. Yeah. I can see a lot of people wanting to answer that call that probably. have a background similar years, but they're not going to jump in the car and go for six hours to be told they're not allowed anywhere near it, right?

Absolutely. So what you're talking about, I think, and forgive me if I'm getting any of this wrong, is a volunteer organization that looks at fire season as the natural disaster of Alberta. Yep. Whether we get perfect or not, and if we do, great, then I don't have to do anything. But it allows a group of people to come together that have some training around fires. Yep. that allows them to get behind the cops so they can actually go and help and do things that are beneficial.

And what happens when it's a really bad scenario? We're under, we don't have enough manpower. And then they're calling in people from all over the country and different countries who have, and maybe I'm wrong on this. I haven't looked at this. Maybe you can point this out, right? They were talking about flying and firefighters from all over different countries. And all that is is credentials, right? Yeah.

Well, it's their organization. Like the season, I was in Heli Tech, there was lots of export. fired. Like we shipped a lot of our guys out. We had it, you know, we had a really quiet season in Alberta. So a bunch of our hack members were shipped out to Ontario and some of them. Sure. So. But once again, it's credentials. It's not, it's like, you know, you parts of this world really can be frustrating because it's bureaucratic. Yeah. You don't have the right badge to get behind to fight the fire. Meanwhile, you've been fighting fires around your area for since you were knee high and you're like, listen, let's do this and this and this. There's lots of brilliant blue color people.

Yeah. What you're talking about is putting people in danger and our society wants nobody to be around danger. Yeah. And so you have to have the ability to get behind them and be accepted to be behind them. That's right. And so what you're pointing out is a way to get some of the expertise of Alberta. Yeah. Together loosely to go fight the worst case scenarios.

Absolutely. And it's not even actually about fighting fire. Like they said, you know, the idea is maybe not to put a bunch of people on the end of firehouses in front of one of those monsters. because that that's not safe. Nobody gets in front of those things. I think the idea is to have a group of people that know or, you know, understand what, you know, that urban interface equipment is all about and how to set it up properly and how effective it is when it's deployed early enough and, you know, over a large enough area. And most of the, most of this infrastructure would probably roll out, you know, and in a best case scenario, two or three days before.

for a fire rolled into an urban setting. So most of it would be set up, just sitting there waiting to be turned on. And then, but if that fire is rolling in and there's bad weather behind it, they're not having any effective with their normal suppression techniques. At that point, then, you know, you start right running those sprinklers. You load the drop tanks and everybody pulls out of there before that fire rolls in. And, you know, that way, that way you've got a fully, saturated area, which would...

Yeah, you're just, you're not fighting fire. And I'm glad you're clarifying this. Yeah, you're, you're doing preventative things. Preventative things to make sure that it doesn't, yeah, um, destroy a city. That's right. Or a small town. And then that way you've got some more resources on the ground to help with evacuation because I think that is one of the things that is overlooked a lot is evacuation support.

You know, outside of somebody saying, get out in five hours, they, somebody can be like, hey, you know, here's the some of the stuff you should take with you. You know, do you need any help loading stuff? up, you know, is there some, do we need to cycle, you know, loop back here and, and check on you and make sure everything's going to be happy and be on this a couple of days ahead, you know, so that guys can mentally prepare because that's, that, that would be a very challenging thing is to pack up your whole world in, you know, five hours, you know, like, it's, that's a, that's a pretty tough thing to do.

Rick, I've only moved once and I think it took me almost a year. When you're sitting around the water cooler, throwing this around with people, you What has been the, because like, you know, one of the things sitting here in Lloyd Minster, although I know in the history of Lloyd, it has burned. You know, overall, like around our area, I'm trying to think of, you know, when I was in high school, there was some bad forest fires up north around the lakes. Yes. But like in recent history, certainly since I've been home, I'm trying to think of a bad fire that's been in the area. And it's just, you know, if it's out of the side, it's out of mind almost, right? Pretty much.

I mean, the smoke's bad today. Yeah. But, you know, as far as a bad forest fire, you know, I feel kind of almost removed from it. And you will be. Yeah. Like this is an agriculture. Probably one of the most interesting things when you look at the fire maps in Alberta is if you have the Alberta fire map, you'll look at, you know, kind of the central southern part of the province. It's a giant void.

You know, there's very rarely anything that pops up on there. There will be a couple of purple dots sometimes. It's a mutual aid. but your agricultural areas are extremely resilient to major fires. Most side is because they're typically dealing with grass and small brush lines and then access. It's really easy to get to with range roads and gravel roads cut everywhere, farmers field access everywhere and a lot of big four-wheel drive tractors with 40-foot discs. They do a lot to keep the fire risk down.

And, you ever see a brush fire get put out quick? It's behind a big John Deere with a 40-foot disc. they can put out a lot of fire really fast. And that's the thing is like the access is good. The equipment is readily available and nobody asks permission to use it. Um, and the, the fuel load like the fuel load is as a fraction of what a big old growth forest would be. So you've got, uh, you got all the factors that set you up for, you know, like I said, the risk of a disaster in Lloyd Minister is small. Yeah, like you guys are way down on the charts.

So that's where you kind of roll into the, you know, the northern communities where they've got big stands of forests like right up to their doorstep. That's the ones that you know, you know, and I assume you've been throwing this idea around. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, like I said, you have, you know, conversations over a cup of coffee or something like that. But everybody that, you know, hears it, you know, thinks it's a great idea. But it's a, it's a big thing to start. And like, you know, it needs a lot of commitment from somebody to kind of get the, get the organization. set up and again like said if we just like you know steal a playbook from albert's search and

rescue that's a lot of the work out of the way um and then of course it's just you know getting the right people to say hey you know this is a great idea i think i want to you know set up a chapter in vagraville or um you'll go north cold lake you know someplace like that or one of those small communities up in that area where they start to get into the big stands of timber you know that's where you know but it doesn't it's not limited to that like there's no reason to say that, you know, a small rural agricultural area, you know, can't have or shouldn't have a bunch of these urban interface kits laying around because, you know, when there's a call to help, they need a lot of them.

You know, Jasper, you know, probably would have needed, I don't know, just hazarded guess here, probably 40 or 50 people extra with, I don't know, 15 or 20 more urban interface kits to kind of, help guard that west side of town, it would have made a massive difference. We both been around blue collar things. You can have the kit and if you don't know what the hell you're doing, you're more of a problem than... That's right. Right?

So it's one thing to have the equipment. It's another thing to know what the heck you're doing with it and how to set it up. And we, you know, so like it's not as simple as just like having a chapter, open it up and having a kit and be like, well, we're here if you need it. It's like, well, a little bit of training, a little bit of training, some drills and stuff like it. Again, like I said, that search and rescue model works really good. You know, they've got, you know, the hint and training center where I did my hack training is a great facility.

If maybe we'd borrow that place for a month in the off season or something like that and then, you know, do some courses out there. Yeah, I assume there's a, you know, I should probably know this, but there must be a map of Alberta. Heck, maybe there's a map of Canada that shows like fire hazard level of certain pieces. You know, when you said when you look at the map and you see, part of Alberta is like non-existent. Yeah.

Except for a couple of splotches. Like is there a map that shows like, hey, cold lake, you should be paying attention or is that not been done? You know what? I'm not sure. I haven't come across one. But I mean, you know, for the most part, anybody that lives in the northern community and they look around and be like, there's zero fields around here.

Because like I said, there's agricultural areas are fantastic for tramping out fire hazard. Like whether it's grain farms or hay fields or pasture land, you know, cattle in an area, to reduce the fire load exponentially because they pound out all the ladder fuels. They leave a lot of big trees around, but if the ladder fuels are all hammered out, those ground fires that propagate through like, you know, they're six inches high,

a foot high or something like that. They don't ever get enough fuel to get up into the canopies and burn down vast swaths of forest, you know, like Liam's talking about. And they're again, easy to get to because, you know,

there's, you can walk through a section of fires where, with a piss pack and put out a lot of, you know, put out a lot of fire line. I think one of the biggest things with driving wildfire though is those, those periods of time when it's like really hot, dry and windy and the fuel loading is really, really bad. And I think anybody in a northern community can kind of just look out their door and be like, yeah, this is, you know, there's a couple of months in the year where this is really dicey. So I don't know if, I would say that you almost, that'd be a question for some of

of our foresters, you know, to say, you know, which, which communities are, are highly exposed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm bringing you on here. I'm like, well, the nice thing is is to give, you know, give you a chance to talk about it. Yeah. For a large portion of Alberta. Yeah.

To hear about it. I have no idea. Maybe everybody hates the idea. Yeah, I'm not doing that. Yeah, exactly. It is an idea. I always, I thought it was a good one. Um, but it needs a, needs a little bit of traction with the right group of people.

And then it's, uh, yeah. Or, or more people to, to, um, to like bounce off it. Because one of the things, I was in clona last year when that first fire was going on. Yeah. And I got, you know, I, uh, you know, airport gets shut down, showed out to Grant and Kathy because they put me up. Yeah. One of the things I, I couldn't figure out. I was like, okay, they're, they're, they got these big bombers and they're dropping a red fire suppressant.

Yeah, like a, it's a fire retardant. It's kind of like mud, basically, but. Okay. I'm like, okay, you live in a northern community. Yeah. Why wouldn't everybody store X amount of bags of it? Why wouldn't the city, I don't know. That way when you get close to a fire, now you got a city of a thousand people.

They go down, they grab two bags each, they go spread it. And I don't know how this works. So maybe it's not a great fire expressment, but I'm watching them just douse everything in this. Yeah. Okay, so it's a fire as present. It's supposed to stop the fire. why wouldn't you enlist instead of, you know, a bomber circle on this thing and hammering as much as they can, you know, you go back to preventative measures. Why wouldn't you go, you know what, if you're going to live in X community, one of the things that we're opening up to public debate is talking about, you know, fire prevention and we're going to, you know, a bag cost, I don't know, is it $100 or is it a dollar.

Yeah, well, it is quite cheap, but, you know, you need a vast quantity. You need a lot of it is the only thing for it to be, you know, really effective. You have to cover a huge amount of area. Well, aerial suppression does work quite well because you can quickly cover a very large area with this stuff. You know, like that side of things, they pretty much dialed into the best efficiency they could get out of it. So you wouldn't like the idea of enlisting the townsfolk to just you live in a certain area? It'd be tough. You know, the season I was with HeliTac though, we did.

And this is on the Alberta website, like the four-sheet website. talk a lot about fire smarting, which is a process of reducing the ladder fuels and trimming and thinning. And unfortunately, as a junior member and on a pretty shit year, I spent a lot of time doing fire smarting, which is basically lawn maintenance inside the forest outside of somebody's town. It's arduous, exhausting, thankless work. And the problem with is it comes back really fast. Like you go through there and spend weeks clearing out an area and then like the next year,

it's just like right back to where it was. you started. So it there the process is there for fire smart practices and and cleaning up the fire load and stuff like it. It's just it's a lot of work. Um, I, you know, I would say that if somebody's wondering what to do with a big area of land that is full of ladder fuels and high risk, put some cows in there. Yeah, when you're talking lateral fuels, are you talking specifically like underbrush? Um, it's just like that, you know, that the thin wippy plants that grow up five, six, eight feet tall and then they dry out. They're tinder dry in the springtime and in what happens is you get

some bad fire weather in the spring or it's dead fall that's kind of leaning propped up against bigger standing trees and that stuff catches on fire and allows it to progress up into the canopies. So if you got a bunch of old growth trees with a manicured lawn underneath them, that's a pretty safe stand of trees like the fire weather would have to be really bad for it to propagate up into the canopies. Whereas, you know, you just get like a little, a little ground fire moving slowly through that small, you know, low lying fuel at the bottom. Um, whereas if you've got 10 years of these ladder fuels where they've vines have climbed

up and these, you know, bramble has built up and dead falls collected and their snags laying everywhere, all of a sudden you've got this abundance of fuel that's allows the flames to propagate upwards very rapidly. And that's where, that's where fires get really. dangerous is you know and they talked about that when I was in Haley Tech their fire line safety focused a lot on you know fire weather um assessing the forest that you're operating in you know like you know know know working in an area that's really susceptible to you know aggressive fast moving fire and you know don't put yourself in danger um so that's where you know like when you look

around a community you can see you know how much fuel loading is built up there in the brush trees and directly up to where the houses are. And if the, and if you have the ability for a fire to have a huge, um, amount of energy coming into a town or into place where there's a lot of structures, it, it takes a lot of effort to,

to slow that down or put it out. So that's where the, that's where the hazard kind of builds up. So if you can reduce that in one capacity or another, um, then it creates a lot more of a buffer or a safety zone around a community and, and, and that's,

that that has been out there for a little while too. There's a couple of northern communities that are talked about putting in agricultural fire buffers, you know, areas that are, you know, set aside fence leased for grazing or, um, you know, even crop land. But that way it gives you a little bit of space between those heavy fuels and where your expensive houses and infrastructure are. Yeah, there's no, like there's the, you know, the, the more I talk about this subject, the more options that seem to present themselves. There is.

Because you go, you stick cat, you know, like, I mean, there's not a ton of, uh, uh, sustenance in the middle of a, uh, a giant brush pile, right? No. But, but, but in saying that, you can put animals in there and what do they do? They'll clear it out. Like it's, I think of, uh, my brother's place has sheep. Oh, yeah, those things are very ferocious. Well, they, they just, you know, it's, it's quite amazing what happens when they get rolling around there.

Even look at what chickens do. Yep. to the underbrush and everything else. They do cleaning and picking it out and, you know, just a little bit of animal movement over and over and over again. Yeah. All of a sudden it starts to open up. It does.

You know, and obviously the bigger the animal, the better off you're going to be. I would think, I may be a little bit wrong on that. No, you're, you're spot on. Like cattle are fantastic at tramping out, um, underbrush and ladder fuels and stuff. They do a fantastic job of taking a very large tract of land and reducing its fire risk. exponentially. But again, it's one of those public image things like, you know, there's a lot of idealism around having these picturesque old growth forests with, you know, diversity in their ecosystems, you know, a lot of people like that, you know, right up close to their home. They like

to live in nature. Um, and, you know, like in Calling Lake where I'm from, there was, there was a lot attraction on setting up agricultural fire buffers around them. You know, there was, you know, quite a few quarters that would have been very key areas to set them up in. But as they were processing, you know, getting the paperwork through, there was a couple of community groups came up and quashed the thing. You know, they got a referendum going and shut it down. Community groups, why? Why didn't they want it?

Well, in their opinion, it was going to destroy the, you know, the picturesque forest that was around the community, you know, like the old growth trees and the, you know, the song, you know, habitat for song birds. And they do like, you know, cattle do are, they're very disruptive to their environment. Like they, like I said, they tramp out the underbrush, they clean up the vegetation. They are, they're pretty industrious when it comes to, you know, grazing. So you, you put them in an area, they'll, they will clean it up. But what's the trade off?

Yeah, I mean, do you, you know, do, do we need to have these picturesque bio diverse forests on our doorstep at the risk that they bring in the. in our fire season. I mean, that's a, that's a debate. That's something that, you know,

you, well, what we can probably agree on is doing nothing is probably starting to be not an option, right? Well, you know, the,

the, the, the, uh, the communities that are, you know, starting, like this is starting to get to be a reoccurring theme. And,

uh, I think we should probably do something soon. So, uh, there is, there is some really good ideas and there's some really great infrastructure out there. There's some, you know,

there's a lot of people that want to do something. But I think creating some opportunity for those resources and for those people to be on the ground when they need to be is key. So that's that's where the conversation starts anyways. Well, and when I hope, you know, like bringing in different guys surrounding the forestry, forest industry and, you know, background in forest fighting and different things like that, I'm like, I don't know where this thing goes. I found it fascinating that I got suggested, like to have it back. I'm like, well, yeah, sure. Like gladly I'll, I'll bring it back on. Because, you know, like, I think everybody's heart breaks a little when you see a community.

Oh, it's tragic. Right? Right. Like, I can't, like, that's, that beyond sucks. I don't have the right word. But at the same time, when it continues to happen, you're like, okay. Yeah. At some point.

Yeah, we really, really got to do something. One of the guys that works for me, he's resident of Jasper. And, you know, his, his place survived. But his parents' place unfortunately did get lost in that place. So he was, you know, he's dealing with that right now. And, you know, believe me, it's just, it's just shitty. Like I said, you know, somebody rolls up and knocks on your door and says, hey, you got to get out in five hours.

Again, like you have to decide what you're taking with you. And, you know, mentally be okay with the rest of it not being there when you get back. And that's the human element, you know. And then you think of the things that it does to insurance and, you know, and all the different things that are going to impact not just the community. but the outside, you're right? Like there's, there's things at play here.

Oh, yeah. That would make it beneficial for, for the province to really pay attention to and try simple thing, you know, try on multiple things to see what works, what doesn't, you know,

like, is animals the right way? Is, is, depends on the situation. Like I said, I think it's one of those areas where, you know,

you've got a group of people in the community, you've got to come up and say, hey, we think this is a good idea, need some healthy debate, and then plot a course from there. but I don't think I don't think they should be shut down from an idealistic perspective because I think that's what we've done over the last 25 years is a lot of these things

have been available and these ideas have floated up before but they've been shut down from ideological perspectives like look at Jasper and Liam was in there they were logging they were doing the right thing they were pulling out that stuff and then from an idealistic perspective it was shut down yeah well once again having well having Liam on to talk about just different things in regards to a forest. Yeah. It's like, huh, I, you know, like when do you hear? You know, what's a healthy forest?

One that's not touched. I don't know, right? Like, I mean, I don't know if I put 10 cents or 10 minutes into thinking about it, right? Yeah. And yet, you know, when a bad, you know, bad forest fire comes through, we spend a billion dollars on it or, you know, what is the number? Yeah. It's, it's a blank check, right? It is.

Just go, right? And, um, at some point, The reason I keep coming back to this conversation and I appreciate you coming in to do this is at some point we have to start to put together things that make sense. Yeah. It'd be nice to get ahead of it. Yeah. To get ahead of it. Yeah.

And, you know, so I don't forget because, geez, you know, first in person interview in the studio in a while. Yeah. This is, we give that out to anyone who comes in the studio. So, cheers. If you, if you open it up, it's a silver. One ounce coin from Silver Gold Bull, an Alberta company. Well, you know, they got their start and gold. We got their start in, um, in Alberta.

Cheers. Rocky Mountain House. That is, so. That is fancy. I had a listener, uh, I had a listener just text me, uh, this morning and said, uh, we were talking about silver and gold. And anyways, he bought some and, uh, it said that they were getting it for, I want to say a wedding present.

Yeah. He serves me correct. And I know, uh, for my, uh, for my nephew, we got him some for his graduation gifts. So people are wondering why the heck, you know, is something that put something a little different under, I don't know, the tree or, you know, at a wedding or a graduation. And certainly for anyone who steps in the ring here comes in this,

it's a little tip of the cap for making the tour here. Are you a silver gold guy? Both, actually. I think that's one of the, I'm not much of, you know, as far as investments and stuff like that. I'm firmly in the camp of if I'd like to see it and put my hands on. I have a hard time buying into investments that are hypothetical. Nothing against the whole crypto Bitcoin market, just not my taste.

Sure. You like feeling it in the hands. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, like that's kind of the, that's my flavor. So this is really cool. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Well, I mean, appreciate you coming in.

You know, it's a real, I don't know, treat to be back in the studio and to get to talk to somebody across like this is the best. Before I let you out of here, is there anything you want to make sure that we've glazed over, haven't talked about that we do talk about? I think we did. Most of the high level subjects is like I said, the risk is there every single spring. Like I said, it's, you know, that's our, that's our natural disaster, you know, and, you know, we, we're not going to stop it.

But, you know, getting some things in place and getting the ball moving on some. some, some ways to mitigate those exposures is probably key. Like I said, we're, I don't think SRD is going to be able to pick up the bigger sword to fight forest fires. They're already doing a lot and they're doing a fantastic job. In the local fire departments, there's not much more you can ask them to do. Um, I think they just need, they need help on, you know, they just need help in that area that is kind of gets forgotten about, you know, that little bit of an overlap. Appreciate you coming in doing this and, uh, uh, wow, we'll, we'll pay attention. You know, it would be interesting to see if anybody responds to this and it's like, it's a great idea.

Because I can always put them in contact with you. Yeah. If it's something that catches traction or people want to find out more, bounce some things off you. Absolutely. Either way, thanks for making the tour this way and, you know, hopping in the studio. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much.