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More military to fight fires

More military personnel are coming to B.C. to help fight wildfires.

The Province requested more Canadian Armed Forces help, as fire conditions are expected to remain poor in the coming weeks.

An additional 300 CAF members will assist in mop-up operations and monitoring under-control fires, bringing the total number of military personnel fighting the fires to 650.

“None of the Province's requests for military support have included deployments in an armed or law-enforcement capacity, or for front-line fire suppression,” the Ministry of Public Safety said in a release.

The military first began assisting at the request of the Province in July, and have helped with ground and air evacuations, delivering food supplies and maintaining road checkpoints.

“Given their training and command structure, the military personnel are ideally suited to assist with mop-up, demobilization and patrol work on a number of our larger wildfires,” said Doug Donaldson, minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. “The work to fully extinguish some of these fires is expected to take several weeks."

There are currently 3,900 people fighting the fires across the province.



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