Wildfire recruits train in snow, sleet and rain

And let’s start getting this. Taylor Parker is 19 and from Salmon R and BC. She says she loves the BC Forest and wants to do all she can to protect it. I love the natural beauties of BC and I just, I don’t want to see it all go up into smoke. So I want to do what I can. I love working hard, you know, pushing myself and seeing that I can make a difference. Coal trailing is one of the skills being practiced at this boot camp. It’s a strategy where firefighters feel for hot embers with their fingers. They have to cover on their hands and knees, inch by inch by their hands to feel all through the root systems and through the dirt just to make sure there’s no nothing burning left in that inside there. So anything warm or see how they’re grabbing the sticks there. They have to grab every single piece of material, wooden, woody material and making sure that it’s there’s nothing burning and they can pull it outside the fire’s edge. This is just one of many challenges practiced again and again at this boot camp over 5 days. These firefighters, they’re all brand new. Recruits are hauling huge packs and hoses up this hillside, up to 150 lbs. And they’re doing it for two hours straight. This is all part of the learning process. They’ll take the skills they learn here today and take them into the forest when they’re fighting fires this summer. It was good. It was tough at the start, but the team kept us motivated, like we just kept pushing each other and kept pushing hard and found the next gear. We kept going further than we thought we could and it started snowing pretty heavy on us, but we just kept going. Exhausted. But it gets them ready for the season when they might be doing it for 10 hours, right? As BC Wildfire heads into what is expected to be a busy season, they hope to have their new recruits hit the ground running. Shelly Joyce, CBC News, Merritt.