Pretoria – The last group of firefighters returning home from a successful firefighting deployment in Canada, will be welcomed by the Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa at OR Tambo International Airport this evening.
The firefighters are due to touch down at 9.15pm.
The group were deployed to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) to assist with Canadian wild fires during the months of July and August.
The Alpha crew were part of the 48 crew members drawn from the South African Working on Fire programme (WoF), as part of a co-operative resource-sharing arrangement between Canadian and South African forest fire-fighting agencies.
The first group arrived back in the country last Friday.
The WoF members worked alongside international firefighting teams drawn from Mexico, the US and Australia.
In anticipation of increasing fire-danger weather under probable conditions of climate change, the international firefighting community has been working together for years to put in place, exchange and resource-sharing agreements.
The Working on Fire programme is an inter-departmental programme administered through the Department of Environmental Affairs. – SAnews.gov.za
