May’s devastating wildfires in the Tantallon suburb of Halifax, around the southern New Brunswick tourist town of Saint Andrews and in the Barrington Lake and Pubnico areas of southeastern Nova Scotia, shone a spotlight on an often-overlooked bit of critical infrastructure: aerial forest fire fighting capabilities.
“Eleven water bombers are hitting the Barrington area, six more water bombers are on the way from Montana,” said Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston in a June 1 update on the then out-of-control fires, which displaced a record 18,000 people, some of whom returned to destroyed homes several days later.
Some of that water bomber support came from Forest Protection Limited (FPL), a Fredericton-based non-profit corporation born out of a joint government and industry initiative to fight the spruce budworm that posed a serious threat to the health of New Brunswick’s fir and spruce forests in the 1950s.
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