Megan Fink Is a Badass Chopper Pilot Who Fights Canada’s Wildfires

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

If you live in Western Canada, chances are you've got wildfires on the mind.

In British Columbia, residents of Vancouver's lower mainland and Vancouver Island are cowering under apocalyptic-looking sepia skies as smoke from inland wildfires gathers in the unseasonably hot and windless region. Residents from numerous small towns in northeastern Alberta wait for possible evacuation orders with bags packed as the number of uncontrolled wildfires—often ignited by lightning—continue to grow in the 95-degree heat.

But for Megan Fink, helicopter pilot and adept iPhone photographer, wildfire is something she's always thinking about, even in the offseason.

"You could kind of see it coming in the winter," Fink told VICE. "The winter was so dry in Alberta and BC, we didn't get the precipitation and snowfall that we usually get."

When Fink's not fighting fires in the summer, she's flying heli-skiing groups in BC's mountain ranges. Last winter, she had to fly much higher and further out than usual, as ski guides searched for skiable snowpack.

Interview with Megan Fink via DAILY VICE.

In the spring, Fink usually sprays non-permanent bodies of standing water in the Edmonton area for mosquito larvae (because "Edmonton's basically built in a swamp"). Fink said that this year, her work was completed in half the time it normally takes, and with one less chopper flying, because the area was bone dry.

But then the wildfire season in Alberta started strong in early May, and Fink's been on the task flying with Alpine Helicopters ever since.

As part of an Initial Attack Crew, Fink performs reconnaissance missions with a small team of experts who scope out newly-reported fires. As the team radios back critical information about fire size and fuel type, Fink surveys the nearby area for sources of water to fill her 180 gallon bucket.

Most recently, Fink found herself dropping crews at the edge of a monster fire that spanned 45,000 hectares. With a fire of that size, Fink explained, a precision battle takes place, delicately choreographed on land and in the air as crews deal with unpredictable elements.

Fink flies a Bell 407, a seven-seater machine that's big, but dwarfed in size by the "mediums," which carry up to 13 passengers. She explained that with a massive fire, you can have multiple helicopters sharing the same uncontrolled airspace.

"On that 45,000 hectare fire, there were five mediums bucketing and four other machines around the size I was flying," she said. "They were each flying around, one person in each machine, so there was an excessive amount of small helicopters around the big helicopters in smoke in a confined space."

"You can only fly so high when it's that smoky," Fink said. "And then we have the bird dogs—small planes that drop fire retardant—come in and they lead the tanker crews on the ground.

"If you're on a really big fire with lots of machines we designate a separate air-to-air frequency so everyone will talk through that. And we set up patterns really quickly in the day so we're all on the same page," Fink said. "If anybody new comes in during the day, someone takes control of them quickly and directs them."

Fink said the aircrews usually communicate through a "fire boss" who helps coordinate with the ground crews, which also include bulldozers. "Bulldozers are actually a huge part of forest fire fighting."

"So you really need to coordinate with the guys on the ground because you don't want to dump 180 gallons of water on their heads," she said. "That wouldn't feel very nice."

"It's actually really impressive to see everybody coordinate like that. It's a necessity to pull together immediately or there'll be hell to pay."

Fink said in those moments she becomes "super dialed in" to her surroundings. "Fires are all business," she said.

Although sometimes at the end of a shift when she's flying back to camp in the light of the setting sun, Fink says the strange beauty of a wildfire hits her.

"This last tour, we were treated to some really gorgeous sunsets. The way the smoke plays with the sunshine, sometime it does really beautiful things."

Fink described flying out at dusk one evening to pick up a crew of four guys who had spent the day fighting a massive fire without backup. "It was a long day, we were all exhausted."

She said the leader of the crew asked her to "just keep flying straight for a bit."

"I thought he was directing me to drop my bucket somewhere, but he wanted to take a picture because it was a really cool hue of smoke through setting dusk sunshine."

"It was the weirdest color. It was dreamy, dreamy in a fire," she said. "We were hot and tired, but it was so pretty."

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