Hacker News Reader

Comment by vehementi | Hacker News Reader

I love how everyone else is just inventing shit about foreign policy. Folks y'all can talk good about hacking but it doesn't mean your armchair intuition is right about specialized issues in other countries

View on HN

At any given point in any given summer, a large chunk of the country is on fire. That's the reality of having a massive landmass covered in boreal forest. The consequence of that is that we have a well funded, professional forest fire service that is among the best in the world at what they do.

If accepting American or Russian help would have helped save Canadian homes and businesses, we would have. The South Africans are here for diplomatic reasons more than anything, and they arrived long after the critical period when we were trying to protect property and lives.

This isn't the California wildfires. It's not threatening populated areas anymore. It's burning in a vast expanse of unpopulated subarctic forest. It's fine. The damage is done; now we wait for it to burn out while keeping an eye out for the next one.

> The South Africans are here for diplomatic reasons more than anything

So it's just a Trudeau-like "diversity" hire or something? Not to say that in a mean way, just that they are not the most qualified and have only received minimal training.

I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't being praised as "South African government sees it as repaying a debt to the Canadian people for their support for the anti-apartheid struggle"[1]. Let's just call it an aid program and be done?

1: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/300-south-afric...

Yeah, they need experience and training, so they're here to get it.

They're also getting paid for it. I'm not against it, just annoyed how it's being published. The real story is "Canada gives South Africa over $2M, trains firefighters". Not "South Africa helps out Canada; pays back apartheid debt". It's shameful to spin it like that.

I for one am very grateful they are here to help. Should be a clear win for both sides.

Talk about experience. That's got to be crazy for them.

> So it's just a Trudeau-like "diversity" hire or something?

Are you implying that they're all black because they're from South Africa?

Why wouldn't they be "diverse" (as in different) if they were white SAs? Though every picture and video seems to imply there's probably few to zero white firefighters that came over. But that might just be selective photography. (To be fair the pictures don't seem to show any women either, but the official number is around 60, or slightly greater than 20%.)

"This isn't the California wildfires. It's not threatening populated areas anymore. It's burning in a vast expanse of unpopulated subarctic forest. It's fine. The damage is done; now we wait for it to burn out while keeping an eye out for the next one."

I hate this notion that wildlife and nature isn't important. Apparently only human lives and materialistic objects matter....

Over the decades they learned that fighting wild fires is counter-productive. What's left is fighting only fires that endanger humans and human structures and leave the wild ones alone. It's the product of many decades of experience! Which is missing in your statement (the experience), that tries to make this into some weird metaphysical issue.

Just an example: http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/09/17/scientists-let-wil...

Did you know that the earth has a history of 400 million years without humans fighting wildfires? (No big plants before the Devonian period.)

Fires are natural events and are part of the process that made our environment what it is. I recently visited Yosemite park and the giant sequoias, and it was explained that during the last 100 years or so there hadn't been any fires in the sequoias area because, to protect them, all fires were extinguished.

Then it turned out that fires are actually beneficial to sequoias reproduction, because they create an environment that is better suited to giant sequoias than the other kinds of trees. So, protecting them from fire was actually damaging their future...

The northern forests of Canada are a large part Jack Pine, which require fire to open their seed cones and reproduce.

Nature takes care of itself. Constantly putting out fires just ensures the next one is even bigger...

>If accepting American or Russian help would have helped save Canadian homes and businesses, we would have

How do you know this? Because the actual firefighters wanted more planes. The prime minster, who knows nothing about fire fighting is the one who rejected the help. Note that this has been an especially dry, hot season with far more wildfires than usual. And despite this, the provincial government cancelled the deal that they had to get more planes. The firefighters were up in arms over this. And that's before the Fort Mac fire happened.

Out of curiosity do you really think the prime minister just made a decision to reject help without consulting other people in the field?

No, and I suggested nothing of the sort.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com