This year’s deployment is the fifth - and largest - for the men and women in Working on Fire, a public works program for young people that serves as South Africa’s wildland fire agency. In a record-breaking year for Canada’s wildfires, with crews coming from all over the world to help out, the South Africans are a familiar and uplifting sight.
They chanted and worked through drills before signing a Canadian flag presented to them as a token of thanks. The group gathered on an early July day in the small town of Fox Creek had traveled nearly 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) to help fight the hundreds of devastating wildfires that have burned homes and wild lands in the region, destroying an area about the size of the U.S. The mood was light as the men and women smiled and clapped, some taking out smartphones to record video of their dancing colleagues before heading off to another day battling the fires raging through Canada.
FOX CREEK, Alberta (AP) - Some three dozen South African firefighters, clad in their bright yellow jackets and dark blue pants, danced, sang and cheered in a sprawling parking lot close by the majestic woods of central Alberta.
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