How Canadians are joining the fight against the L.A. wildfires

Canadians are joining the fight against the Los Angeles wildfires with all levels of government now offering assistance, including the City of Toronto.

On Friday, Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters that Toronto will be ready if and when California’s governor says they need help to fight the raging fires which have killed at least 11 people and displaced tens of thousands.

“I’ve asked our fire chief, and he said, yes, we have 100 firefighters on standby and ready to go,” Chow said. “It would not impact service in Toronto.”

Meanwhile, the provincial government says they are sending a fire brigade to prevent more devastation.

“We are sending two waterbombers over to California, 165 urban firefighters with all their equipment and all the requirements that are needed,” Premier Doug Ford said on Thursday.

Ontario has also promised to send an incident management team of up to 20 additional staff to California to assist their efforts in battling the devastating fires.

They join several other provinces, including water-bombing pilots and crews from Quebec and British Columbia who are already fighting the wind-whipped flames.

At the federal level, Canada’s minister of national defence has approved a request to deploy the Royal Canadian Airforce to get 250 firefighters and equipment to California, where emergency crews and organizations have been working tirelessly since the wildfires erupted on Jan. 7.

Humanitarian groups like Direct Relief, are on the ground and working to ship critical medical aid to vulnerable people who have been evacuated from hospitals, nursing homes and clinics.

“We work in disaster zones and war zones in over 100 countries and in all 50 U.S. states, and this is reminiscent of some of the worst war zones that we work in,” said Aaron Rabinowitz, an emergency response manager with Direct Relief. “We’re also providing something called reentry kits because we realize people are eventually going to have to return to their homes. And so that’s gloves, goggles, coveralls, everything.”

Other organizations like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army are also providing emergency shelter for some of the tens of thousands of displaced residents.