Rangers with the state Department of Environmental Conservation recently spent two weeks aiding Canadian firefighting crews as they fought historic wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia. (Provided photo — state DEC)

While New Yorkers were taking photos of smoke from Canadian wildfires that blew into our state earlier this month, a handful of state forest rangers volunteered to travel north to help fight the fires head-on.

One of them was local Ranger Robert Praczkajlo, who works in Essex and Franklin counties. He returned home on Sunday after spending two weeks in Quebec fighting some of the most extreme fires he’s seen in the wilderness. Praczkajlo was stationed about six hours north of the border with fellow state Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers Anastasia Allwine, Chester Lunt and William Roberts, and around a dozen firefighters from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Rangers said they flew around in helicopters and were dropped off in remote, isolated “smoke spots” to attack the fires there. Praczkajlo described how rangers pumped water out of a lake or pond, ran hoses to the fires and sprayed down the edges of the flames. Meanwhile, helicopters dropped “Bambi buckets” of water to keep the fire out of the trees, carving paths of safety for them to get to the core of the fires.

They worked on four fires and were able to get three of them under control so they won’t spread any further, Praczkajlo said. That fourth fire was between 12,000 and 16,000 acres large. They were the first to get eyes on it, but while they were fighting it, they had to be evacuated by helicopter.

“Things got a little warm,” Lunt said.

It was an exciting two weeks, Praczkajlo said, and they all enjoyed going up to help their neighbors to the north in an unprecedented fire season. Their thoughts are still up in Quebec.

“I think I can speak for all the team that we would love to go back and fight the fires,” Praczkajlo said. “It was hard to leave.”

That fourth fire was still “raging out of control” when they left, Praczkajlo said.

DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said it was a small group of rangers who raised their hands and agreed to run toward the fire, and he’s proud of them. Seggos said they’ve told Canadian officials they would return if requested. The DEC is part of the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Compact.

Praczkajlo said they definitely have more rangers that would be willing to go. Seggos said New York’s fire risk has lessened in the past two weeks as it has gotten some rain, so it has more individuals to spare.

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Evacuation

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Praczkajlo said they had to land in some “tight spots” in Quebec. But the tightest was the fire they had to be evacuated from.

The morning they arrived to that fourth fire, the fire was burning low and slow, where they could attack it with hoses. But by the afternoon, it had gotten up into the treetops, where it spread faster than along the ground.

“The fire basically travels in the moss and the lower growth on the forest floor,” Praczkajlo said. “As soon as it gets to a ladder fuel — which means a tree that has limbs all the way to the ground — it starts to build the heat under the tree and it goes up into that tree, burns it. If it’s hot enough, dry enough and enough wind, that tree just burns the next tree and eventually you go from torching to a crown fire where the fire sustains just by literally burning from treetop to treetop. That’s when fires grow very quickly.

“The temperature and relative humidity aligned and the fire just started to rage out of control. We had to be evacuated out of there,” he added.

Praczkajlo said this fire was around 16,000 acres in size. They later saw this fire from the sky while flying in a helicopter. Rangers said it was “remarkable” and “daunting” to see such a huge wall of flame.

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Why they volunteered

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Why did they run toward danger? Rangers said it’s ingrained in who they are.

“We like going on these assignments,” Lunt said. “We raised our hand because it feels good to help other people. It feel good to work hard. It gives you purpose and meaning.”

“You hear about a lot of things happening in other countries that cause concern for you that you can’t directly effect,” Allwine said. “So having the opportunity to go up and have a direct effect, however big or small, on the situation was really privilege I couldn’t pass up on.”

Though they saw themselves playing a relatively small part of the firefighting effort, they were going to areas that no one else was going to, as Canada’s firefighting force is stretched thin.

“Three of the fires we fought had not had any personnel on the ground at all, ever, since they ignited,” Praczkajlo said.

Roberts said he has family who live in Canada, so it was personal for him. His family wasn’t endangered by the fire but they have been heavily impacted by the smoke. He said to be immersed in it for two weeks was an opportunity for personal growth, and they they are coming back now with skills and knowledge they can use to fight fires here in New York.

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Scope of the fires

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These are historic fires, Praczkajlo said. When they left, they were told that 4.5 million acres of land in protected areas had burned, with another 2.5 million acres burnt in unprotected areas.

To fly to the last fire, they flew over areas of fires they had previously fought. Praczkajlo said it was around a 10-minute flight, like the time it takes to fly from Lake Placid to Lake Clear. He said to imagine an area that size completely burned out. They saw incinerated cottages and camps along the way.

While New York has had rain and cooler temperatures in the past two weeks, Praczkajlo said up there, it was 90 degrees out with 10 to 15 mile per hour winds every day. The smoke changes weather patterns and delays rain. He said Canada needs the rain right now to get the fires under control.

The sun was still orange in the sky between Ottawa and Montreal when they drove back.

With the right winds, that smoke could move down to New York. Some smoke did cloud the sky on Sunday afternoon, but it was all cleared out by Monday morning. Experts have been warning that as these fires continue, the smoke could blow down to this region at periods all summer long.

Praczkajlo said the bulk of these fires started on June 1 when lightning storms ignited dry landscapes. In the Maniwaki control area where they were stationed alone, there were 112 fires.

Allwine said the spruces were forging. The fire was traveling from the base to the top of the trees, completely engulfing them in flames.

“They always tell you a large firefront sounds like a freight train,” she said. “Just the smaller scale, the sound of it was extremely dramatic.”

So was the speed, too.

Praczkajlo said fire was jumping over lakes 1 kilometer wide.

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Canadian hospitality

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The rangers stayed at a remote outfitters lodge in the deep woods. Praczkajlo said the Canadians they worked with were friendly.

Lunt said the response from the Canadians was “above and beyond” what he had expected.

“There was a language barrier and it was mainly solved by them,” he said.

Rangers thanked DEC staff for doing all the behind-the-scenes work and logistics, their families for picking up the slack while they were gone, Seggos for letting them go up, and the Canadians for their hospitality.

Praczkajlo said the food they ate in the woods was better than what he cooks at home.

According to a press release from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office, more than 2,600 fires have burned an estimated 13 million acres in Canada. Other DEC forest rangers were stationed in Nova Scotia where more fires are burning.

These two missions were the first time New York state forest rangers have been deployed to Canada since wildfires in Quebec in 2005, according to Hochul’s office.

The first time the state sent firefighting crews elsewhere was in 1979 to assist western states with large wildfires.