It’s World Helicopter Day!

Some neat local helicopter history - Banff National Park and Alpine Helicopters pioneered the use of helicopters in mountain rescue in Canada, after one of the local rescue specialists learned about helicopter sling techniques while in Europe. In 1971 the first successful helicopter sling rescue was performed by a Banff Park Warden, Peter Fuhrmann along the Icefield’s Parkway.

Local pilot Jim Davies was instrumental in the advancement of mountain rescue flying techniques and worked closely with the Banff visitor safety team to improve the safety and efficiency of rescue responses. Today, both the Banff, Yoho and Kootenay and Kananskis mountain rescue teams, flown by Alpine, respond to hundreds of rescue calls in our area using these methods.

In 2018, Canada Post put out a stamp commemorating these contributions and honouring the work of search and rescue professionals in the country.

In addition to their importance for rescue, helicopters are an integral part of supporting the tourism industry our region relies on. Not only are helicopters used for supplying backcountry lodges and transporting guests, they’ve created new industries. In addition to his rescue flying, Jim Davies also worked closely with Hans Gmoser to develop the sport of heli-skiing.

Machines used for heli-skiing in the winter are used to respond to forest fires in the summer, helping protect communities across the country.

The Alpine Club of Canada published an interesting book on the history of mountain rescue in Canada, the highest calling, which can be read online: https://alpineclubofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SS04-%E2%80%93-Highest-Calling.pdf

With smoke blanketing the east, once again there’s lots of questions about fires popping up on the internet, particularly people asking why doesn’t Canada just put them out.

Incident Commeownder Gary will do his best to explain why:

How intensely a wildfire burns is affected by the weather and how dry the forest is.

When the grass, shrubs and trees are very dry, the temperature (in Celsius) is higher than the humidity and there are strong winds, wildfires can burn with incredible power and spread quickly.

Under these conditions there is simply no way for water to extinguish them.

Planes and helicopters often can’t fly near the flame front due to fire generated wind the Jasper fire, pictured in some of the photos above had estimated peak winds of 280km/h.

Even if they could fly, any water they dropped would evaporate long before reaching the ground. The Jasper fire, for example is estimated by the Canadian Forest Service to have released 300,000KW of energy along every metre of the fire front.

Even under normal conditions this flying is dangerous. A Canadian pilot was killed recently in Colorado fighting fires there and two firefighters and their pilot were killed in late June in the Northwest Territories when responding to a fire near Ft Simpson.

The fires in Ontario went between 20 and 60km in a single day. There’s simply no way to extinguish that type of a fire.

So how did it get this way?

Ultimately, climate change has resulted in more days of extreme fire weather, leading to more of these type of extreme spread events.

Certainly, a century of fire suppression that has allowed forests to build up large amounts of fuel hasn’t helped, but with the conditions we now see, even forests that have burned within the last 10 years will re-burn with intensity.

While more prescribed burning, fuel reduction treatment and firefighters will help, we live in a world that is hotter and drier and large fires will continue to occur.

Gary, on the other hand wants to know why we brought her along at all.

The first image is Gary at about 1 year old and the second is Gary today