USask student Rourke Wunder-Buhr shares her experience battling wildfires in Jasper National Park.

As the academic year ends, USask students prepare to transition from the classroom to summer jobs. While many take up positions in retail, internships or campus labs, some students choose a far more demanding path — fighting wildfires. Intrigued by this bold choice, this author reached out to one to learn more about the experience as a wildland firefighter.

Rourke Wunder-Buhr, a Kinesiology major in her final semester, has been spending her summers firefighting since 2022. Last year, she was part of the crew that battled the devastating wildfires in Jasper National Park.

Her firefighting journey began at Prince Albert National Park, where she worked full-time as a visitor service attendant. She joined the volunteer structural fire department with a few friends for fun. “We knew they wanted more girls to join, and it was just like training once a week, and then we’d go out for ice cream sometimes,” she recalled. “We didn’t really respond to a lot [of fires] in Waskesiu.”

While the calls were infrequent, the experience planted a seed. “One of my captains actually said to me sometime during that summer that I should think about going into wildland firefighting, just because there’s lots of money and lots of opportunities, and that had kind of always stuck with me.”

After two summers working as a visitor service attendant and volunteering with the fire department, Wunder-Buhr decided to make the jump to a new park. She applied for several wildland firefighting positions, but wasn’t hired for any of them. She ended up in Jasper working in visitor services again.

Three months later, things changed. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the crew was down a body. “They were looking for another person because we were already in really high fire danger,” Wunder-Buhr said. She reapplied, got the position and traded her desk job for the fire line.

The transition wasn’t easy. “Every day I’d come home, I was so tired, and [right when I started we were] working 12-hour days with overtime just because of the risk [of fires] during the day,” she added. “I won’t lie, it kind of sucked for the first couple days. It was a big adjustment, going from pretty cushy eight-hour air conditioning to this job being outside.”

There wasn’t really a “typical” day, especially during such a volatile fire season. However, most mornings began with briefings on weather conditions, lightning and fire risk. When conditions were extreme, helicopter patrols, known as smoke flights, were conducted twice daily. Early on, much of the work involved training, staying on standby and monitoring lightning activity. 

Once fires broke out, however, the job quickly became intense and unpredictable. “Every day really varied,” she said. “You work 14 days in a row, and we were working 12 to 14 hours a day, so it’s really crazy. You have no time to yourself, which is fine — it’s part of the job.”

Wunder-Buhr explained that wildland firefighting isn’t what most people imagine. “You don’t actually [use a] hose that much,” she said. “The big issue, obviously, is water sources […] In the mountains, there isn’t a ton of water.” She added, “You’re almost never at the head of the fire, right in front of it, trying to stop it from coming.”

Much of their time is spent searching for “smokes,” which are slow-burning fires that occur when the duff layer, a compacted mix of dead plant material in the soil, smolders and burns. The crew digs these up and extinguishes them by hand, sometimes calling in helicopters to help when needed. “It’s extremely tedious […] this is what we do for 10 hours a day,” she said. “It would take us almost 14 days to clear a whole four-kilometer line.”

Wunder-Buhr learned that the work is far more scientific than she expected. Firefighters may even set fires to fight fires. “A big fire has an in draft, so it pulls stuff in, right? So when you start a fire ahead of it […] the less intense fire gets pulled toward it and it lowers the intensity.”

She described Jasper’s surreal emptiness during the height of the emergency. “It was almost spooky […] There’s no one in town because it’s still evacuated. Nothing’s open.” She remembered the joy of seeing a café reopen. “I was like, ‘Oh, it’s normal. I can go get a coffee. There are people around town.’”

Despite the damage, Wunder-Buhr encourages people to continue visiting Jasper. “I think people believe that Jasper is ruined now, and I completely disagree. Yes, one of the main valleys burnt, but the West and East valleys are fairly untouched. There are lots of parts of town that are going forward as usual. I really encourage people to come and see it for themselves.”

She also reflected on the bigger picture behind the rise in wildfires. “In North America, we’ve mismanaged fire for the previous 100-plus years because people were so scared of wildfires. Now we’re learning that we can’t take away a natural part of the ecosystem.” She added, “Indigenous stewardship is really important with fire management — that’s been a long history, and we’re starting to work with them a lot more on figuring out how we can manage the land together because they have a lot of super valuable knowledge there.”

Wunder-Buhr credits some of her success as a firefighter to her background as a student trainer for the USask men’s football team, which helped her adapt to emergency situations.“That was one thing I really fell back on […] I knew how to do first aid, and I knew how to do it at somewhat of an advanced level compared to some of my crewmates, so that was a big advantage.”

She was also involved in organized sports for much of her life, and working with her crew filled the gap that was left when she stopped. “I know that the three other members on my crew really had my back, and once I got close with them, that was a big relief, just being able to joke around with them.”

She encourages other students to consider firefighting if they’re interested but acknowledges how lucky she was to get hired without any prior full-time experience. “The provincial wildfire organizations take on inexperienced people all the time. They get you trained up, and definitely starting in a place like Saskatchewan is a lot less intimidating than starting in the mountains that you’re unfamiliar with. If I could go back, that’s maybe the progression I would have done.” 

She added, “It’s a good community, [with] people who care about your safety, about who you are as a person, [and] they’re interested in you. It’s a fun job, it’s rewarding. It is challenging at times, but you do get paid very well for it.”

Wunder-Buhr plans to return to firefighting this summer and hopes to eventually pursue medical school, continuing her path in emergency response and helping others lead healthier lives.