PORTLAND’S Sarah Pedrazzi was not expecting to be fighting bushfires in the middle of July, least of all on the other side of the world.

But that’s exactly what the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) Forest Fire Operations Officer found herself doing over the last five weeks, after she and a crew of other Australian firefighters were shipped out to Canada to help out with the devastating fires the country is facing.

Ms Pedrazzi was selected to be part of a 20-person crew from DEECA’s Forest Fire Management (FFM), who along with crews from other states were sent up to a fire in the north-west corner of Canada’s Alberta Province near a town called High Level, in what locals told her was the biggest fire season they had seen.

The days there sit around 30oC at the moment, a remarkable difference to their winter lows which often drop below -40oC, and the surrounding birch and spruce forests are populated by moose, beavers, squirrels and even bears – a fair change from Ms Pedrazzi’s usual stomping grounds in state forests in South-West Victoria.

After a few days acclimatising, they were sent out to a base camp nearer to the fire front, joining crews from Canada, America and South Africa.

“Where we were was a pretty remote, we couldn't drive into the fires so we got helicoptered in every day and back out as well,” she said.

“'It’s a completely different landscape and different vegetation than what we're used to here.

“It was pretty surprising how green it is over there and it would still burn, whereas here if you tried burning something green it's like there's no way it'll go.”

There was also a stark difference in firefighting methods to back home given the amount of water available – usually a scarce resource in Australia’s fire seasons.

“We can still apply the training and the skills we have here over there.

“The main difference is, over here we're in a water carrying vehicle and we drive pretty much everywhere whereas over there, you don't have that.

“You just get dropped in and you have your resources there for the day. You have a pump, you have your hoses, some hand tools and that's it until they come and get you in the afternoon.

“On the fire line we were mostly like cutting (fire break) lines and doing hose lays, we would usually have like a good water point where we were dropped, or we’d have a tank which the helicopters would dump water in for us to use.

“We'd basically just run canvas horse and flood the fire up with water.

“There's just water everywhere, so you have an endless supply of water to just flood the fires.”

A highlight of the trip, Ms Pedrazzi said, was working alongside a local Canadian First Nations fire crew.

“They taught us a lot about their firefighting techniques, which sort of set us up for the rest of the deployment,” she said.

“We made really good friends with them., most of the guys added us on social media and stuff like that.

“To have that connection with them, and it was their land that we were on and working the fire with them was really cool.”

The locals, particularly their regular helicopter pilots, were very keen to show their visitors some of the unique wildlife, often dipping down alongside rivers to show them a bear or moose they had spotted.

The size of the fire they were attending was around 5,000 hectares When Ms Pedrazzi arrived,, and over the month grew enormously to 30,000ha.

But big fires and the corresponding hard work and long hours are nothing new to her.

“I started as a PFF (Project Fire Fighter) in 2017, so I’ve had a few big fire seasons in VIC, ’18 ’19 and ’20 there were a lot of deployments across different areas,” she said.

They worked for 14 days straight before having a two-day break in a nearby town called Peace River, where Ms Pedrazzi admitted there was “not a whole lot” to do.

“It was great to relax, and talk to the locals, some of the other crews got to go to a bigger place called Jasper which would have been fun, but it was still cool to be able to spend the days in a small community,” she said.

After a break, it was back into the hard work as the fire continued to grow, and along with it the number of people at their base trying to fight the blaze.

After a 40- hour door to door journey home, Ms Pedrazzi hardly took a minutes break after getting back to Portland on a Tuesday, going straight into training with her Tyrendarra football side and playing on the Friday night (and named in the best), before heading off on a ski trip at Mount Hotham for the weekend and back at work on the Monday.

After a month in a tight knit crew spending essentially every hour together, Ms Pedrazzi said she and the others she was deployed with had become like a family.

“It was pretty strange saying goodbye we were really lucky we had such a great crew. Yeah, when we got to the airport, we said our goodbyes and that felt a bit weird,” she said.

“But I guess maybe I’ll see them again on the fire line somewhere one day.”

Ms Pedrazzi and her crew tag-teamed with others from Victoria who have headed out to a similar area of Alberta, including some from the South West.