With her head above the void, a building inspector scrutinizes the forest fires | Forest fires in Canada

Building inspector Anastasia Luckenuick uses thermography, a thermal imaging technique, to help with SOPFEU in the fight against forest fires. Today, she is participating in operations on the Côte-Nord, which is struggling with numerous forest fires. An enriching mission, according to her, which allows the SOPFEU to detect the unobservable.

Last year, there were major fires in Quebec. […] Then I said, “I don’t know if they need help.” So I sent a messageraconte Anastasia Luckenuick.

The SOPFEU needed it, and so accepted her services. Since then, the thermographer has participated in the operations of the SOPFEU in the Chibougamau region, in Northern Quebec and in the Manic-5 dam region.

She is now deployed at the base of operations of the SOPFEU from Sept-Îles to carry out thermal imaging analyses on the fires north of Port-Cartier and Sept-Îles.

When the firefighters have put out a fire, I arrive afterwards to see if there are any hot spots that they wouldn’t necessarily have foundshe says.

On board a helicopter, perched in the air and held by a strap, Anastasia Luckenuick comes to sweep with her camera portions of forests that could hide emerging fires.

Sometimes it’s impossible to find [un point chaud] while walking. But with the thermal camera, I am able to find a needle in a haystack.

According to the prevention and communications officer of the SOPFEUMélanie Morin, thermography is used in two types of fire situations.

It can be used to determine whether rainfall has limited the presence of hot spots at the edge of a contained fire, but also to detect hot spots, invisible to the naked eye, of a controlled fire, i.e. one that no longer has visible flames.

It is important to find these hot spots to be able to extinguish them and then leave the fire and declare it [comme un] fire extinguished with certaintysays Ms. Morin.

It is especially on this second type of fire that Anastasia Luckeniuck intervenes. I don’t usually go over an active fire.she specifies.

An operation less simple than it seems

Mrs. Luckenuick’s work begins early, at dawn, and must be done quickly. She has only a short window of time to complete her analyses.

Thermography is often carried out in the evening or at night due to the temperature of the ground.

Stones and small rocks, in contact with the heat of the sun, absorb this heat and complicate the search for very precise heat points.

From the morning, in a quarter of an hour, the stones can display temperatures of 27 to 30 degrees Celsius.

What I want is hot spots, not hot stonessays Ms. Luckenuick, who presented thermal images of her field analyses to Radio-Canada.

At times, it is the turn of precipitation to complicate operations on the ground.

It was a little more difficult this morning.she explained on Wednesday. The rain, although welcomed by the forest firefighting teams, formed an opaque layer of humidity at the level of the trees, and complicated the thermography work.

But once the humidity has dissipated, we can see very wellshe added.

When hot spots are identified and marked from the air, the ground teams of the SOPFEU can intervene at specific points and extinguish nascent fires or fires that are dormant, hidden under peat, for example.

The work of the ground teams is arduous since there remains lots of work to do on the three fires contained north of Sept-Îles and Port-Cartier, according to the spokesperson for the SOPFEU.

In the last few days, only 2 mm of rain fell in the Port-Cartier region.

For her part, Anastasia Luckenuick says she wants to continue her adventurewhich she describes as beautiful mission and which embodies the adaptability necessary in the fight against forest fires.

With information from Michèle Bouchard.