Meadow Lake, Prince Albert tribal councils join forces with SPSA for wildfire plan

“I think the main thing that they taught us being out in the fire line was getting up early in the morning and being on the fire line in the initial stages of a fire,” he said, adding crews would sometimes slow down during the hottest part of the day and return again in the evening as conditions cooled.

Hardlotte said older firefighters passed down practical knowledge about pumps, hand tools and remote camps. According to Hardlotte, some of those same experienced people later became instructors when formal safety rules and training requirements came into place.

“If we use this knowledge … maybe we can attack these fires in the early stages, using what we have from the air and putting those boots on the ground,” he said.

He said the agreement is also about addressing communication, prevention and the way community-based firefighters are used.

Chief Jeremy Norman of Meadow Lake Tribal Council said the goal is quicker response when smoke or a lightning strike is spotted near a community.

“We’re hoping for quicker response,” Norman said. “You see a lightning strike or you see something smoldering near your community, we’re open to attack it right away before it gets too big.”

Many MLTC communities already have one or two crews available, and Norman said the agreement could help make better use of those crews when a fire is still small.

“To have that ability to send them out right away when the fire is small, I think that could be a game changer,” he said. “We feel that our crews are capable of more.”

He said one of the biggest concerns raised by residents after 2025 was “waiting for the fire to get too big before attention’s sent in.” Norman noted English River was evacuated for 56 days and Canoe Lake for 34 days, saying work done before the next fire season “is only going to make things better for everyone.”

The 2025 wildfire season put heavy pressure on northern Saskatchewan. paNOW reported in July that nine northern communities were under some form of evacuation, with about 1,700 people displaced at that time and 369 wildfires recorded for the year, well above the five-year average.

By late July, evacuation orders had expanded to 12 communities and the province requested up to 300 Canadian Armed Forces personnel to support firefighting efforts as Type 3 resources were stretched. By Aug. 13, the SPSA reported 83 active wildfires, 13 of them out of control, and thousands more people evacuated or receiving support from nine northern communities.

SPSA president and fire commissioner Marlo Pritchard said the MOU builds on work that began before the 2025 fire season and intensified afterward. “One of the outcomes that we’re hoping out of the MOU … is around enhanced communication, using our Provincial Emergency Operations Centre as co-ordination,” he said.

Last year was an extreme drought year that turned into the worst fire season in Saskatchewan’s history, challenging the SPSA which was formed in 2017, two years after the last time the province set a record for wildfires.

It led to confusion among evacuees and caused responding agencies to scramble to accommodate roughly 17,000 evacuees in a short time.

Pritchard said his agency has conducted reviews and identified places to do better.

“That will be probably a never-ending cycle of improvement because we know communication was one of the first things that broke down last year because of the overwhelming natural disaster that we all were facing in different communities,” he said.

Evacuation planning is also part of the work, including improvements to the provincial evacuation app and pre-registration with communities. Pritchard said the goal is to shrink gaps in support when people are forced from home and to reduce the impacts on communities. “All of it is designed collectively and collaboratively to reduce the impacts on the communities, lessen the number of evacuations,” he said.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

by Susan McNeil

Meadow Lake, Prince Albert tribal councils join forces with SPSA for wildfire plan

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