Ontario is providing supplies and personnel, including 165 urban firefighters, to support California in its fight against wildfires, Premier Doug Ford’s office said on Thursday.
The province will send two waterbombers and pilots, as well as an incident management team of up to 20 additional staff with expertise in logistics, coordination, safety, mapping and response planning, according to an email from Grace Lee, spokesperson for Ford’s office.
“Our closest friend and our closest ally needs help and we’re going to make sure we’re going to be there,” Ford said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
Ontario can send more firefighters if required, Lee said. The province is also sending hoses, pumps, chainsaws, axes and other equipment.
Lee said the province will coordinate with the federal government and the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre on how and when these resources will be deployed.
“Hopefully…they’ll be on their way by tomorrow,” Ford said. “We’re working [at] warp speed.”
As of Thursday morning, the raging blazes had killed five people, put 130,000 people under evacuation orders and ravaged communities from the Pacific Coast to inland Pasadena.
Toronto native recounts evacuation from LA wildfires
Nick Clemens, a Torontonian who now lives in Los Angeles, is among the roughly 130,000 people under evacuation orders as wildfires ravage the west coast city.
As firefighters continue to tackle wildfires raging through California, Metro Morning spoke to a Toronto man living in L.A. who had to evacuate twice.
He was at work at Los Angeles’ famed Getty Villa Museum on Tuesday when he first heard security guards had spotted a brush fire burning nearby.
“I went upstairs to take a look and I could clearly see thick plumes of black smoke very close to my work, near our employee lunch area,” the Toronto native-turned-Angeleno says.
“Then I saw a few co-workers who said, ‘It’s time to go — right now,’ and I immediately left.”
Clemens headed to the home where he rents space, packed all his belongings into his car and drove to a friend’s house in the Woodland Hills neighbourhood of Los Angeles, an area that has thus far been spared from wildfires devastating other parts of the city.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this. It’s tragic,” Clemens told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. Clemens moved to Los Angeles about 11 months ago, where he took a job building custom mounts for displays at Getty Villa, home to tens of thousands of priceless antiquities.
Though at various points Getty Villa was threatened by the wildfires, the iconic museum managed to escape destruction. But so much else has been lost.
“I was watching the news yesterday and saw that people have lost their lives and their homes and I just really feel for all these people,” Clemens says.
“In the time that I’ve been here, I’ve really developed a fondness for Los Angeles and for the way that people live, the culture and the day to day life here. And to see some of my favourite hang-out spots and restaurants burn has been painful and sad.”
Clemens has yet to learn the fate of his rental home and has no idea when he might be able to return to whatever is left. For now, he’s prepared to leave Woodland Hills if an evacuation order is issued for the area.
You can watch the full Metro Morning interview with Clemens in the video player above.
‘We are all affected by this’
Brendan Ko, a Toronto photographer who has been living in Los Angeles area for the past few months, left his home in Glendale on Wednesday night when the Sunset fire started. Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County.
A friend told him that he needed to evacuate on Wednesday morning. He said it was a day of indecision, but he finally decided to leave to avoid gridlock on the highway. He drove to Death Valley to get away from the fires — a four and a half hour drive away. He said he wanted to breathe clean air again.
Ko said he may go back to his home on Friday because his neighbourhood is now currently safe.
“I’m doing OK. I think that’s the word that everyone’s been saying in LA, OK, or less than that,” Ko told CBC Radio’s Here and Now on Thursday.
“It depends on what neighbourhood you are in but we are all affected by this.”
Ko said the sky was dark in Glendale from the Eaton fire.
“Yesterday, it was very surreal… The sky was completely dark. It was strange because people are going to Starbucks and all these things and yet there is this giant fire happening all around us,” he said.
“I don’t know what the city will be like after the fire. Hopefully, the fire doesn’t spread even further.”
