For the fourth time, the Government of Mexico, through the National Forestry Commission (Conafor), sent a contingent of firefighters to help suppress forest fires in Canada, made up of 101 people.
The Mexican contingent, which this time will work in the province of Ontario, is made up of five brigades, five brigade chiefs, 20 crew chiefs, two representatives of the field unit, a COVID coordinator, and the rest as line combatant personnel who make a total of 101 people.
The personnel, Conafor pointed out, comes from 22 entities in the country: Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chiapas, Mexico City, Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Yucatán.
“All of them comply with the requirements and standards requested by Canada since they completed their registration in the online platform of the Forest Fire Fighters Selection System for International Deployment (SISECOIF) 2021 and satisfactorily accredited the phase of physical fitness evaluations and knowledge of forest fires”, Conafor specified.
In addition, they said that from the concentration of the 101 people selected; three of them women, took place from July 15 to 17 at the Conafor headquarters, located in Zapopan, Jalisco, where some other activities such as baggage weighing, medical check-up, COVID-19 test, check of personal protective equipment, among some others were carried out.
“This contingent is sent by the Mexican government at the request of Canada, and responds to the statistics of the Canadian Interagency Center for Forest Fires (CIFFC), which classifies the current situation in that country as critical, for which a level 5 of national preparation is ordered,” Conafor said in a statement.
They recalled that the classification of preparation levels is established according to climatic conditions, amount of vegetation that can burn (fuels), fire behavior forecast, and the availability of national resources for fire suppression, with number five being the highest level on a scale of 1-5, so Level 5 is considered the highest.
Conafor added that the Mexican contingent arrived today, July 17 at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and were received by a delegation led from the Mexican side by the Mexican Ambassador to Canada, Juan José Gómez Camacho, and the Toronto Consul General, Porfirio Thierry Muñoz Ledo.
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