La Jornada – A unit from Konavor arrives in Canada to fight forest fires

Mexico City. The National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) has sent 101 firefighters and firefighting technicians to Ontario, Canada, to help put out wildfires in that country.

This comes within the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding on the exchange of resources for the management of forest fires between the two countries.

For the fourth time, the Government of Mexico has sent a unit of five brigades, five brigade chiefs, 20 crew chiefs, two representatives of the field unit, a Covid coordinator and the rest as linear combatants, who make up a total of 101 people.

These employees come from 22 entities in the country: Aguascalientes, Campeche, Chiapas, Mexico City, Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, State of Mexico, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Viracánروز, and Lulacála .

All of them comply with the requirements and criteria requested by Canada since they have completed their registration in the online platform of the Forest Firefighter Selection System for International Publication (SISECOIF) 2021 and satisfactorily accredited to the stage of assessments of bushfire fitness and knowledge.

The 101 selected people, including three women, were focused from July 15 to 17 at the Konavor headquarters, located in Zapopan, Jalisco as they completed some other activities such as baggage weighing, medical examination, COVID-19 testing, review of personal protective equipment, from Among other things.

This unit is dispatched by the Mexican government at the request of Canada, and responds to statistics from the Canadian Interagency Center for Forest Fires (CIFFC), which classify the current situation in that country as critical, and has a preparedness level of 5. National declared, considered the highest.

On Saturday, the Mexican battalion arrived at Toronto Pearson International Airport, where it was received by a delegation led by the Mexican side, Mexican Ambassador to Canada Juan Jose Gomez Camacho and Toronto Consul General Porfirio Thierry Muñoz Lido.

On behalf of the Canadian representation, the new Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forests, Greg Rickford, and Special Adviser on International Affairs to Premier Doug Ford, Anish Dwivedi, attended.