NEW SALEM – Joseph Nawrocki returned from another trip to Quebec on July 22, but he had no time to visit the Quartier du Petit Champlain or stop by Notre-Dame Basilica.

He was too busy helping battle the wildfires that have ravaged parts of Canada and affected all of the country’s 13 provinces and territories since March.

The 34-year-old is a state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) wildland firefighter and was part of a 16-member crew that spent two weeks working directly on the fire line in Quebec – building fire breaks, securing perimeters, containing fires and protecting structures.

“We did a lot of cutting for helipads in the fire zone,” he said, adding that firefighters were flown by helicopter to the fire line each morning. “It was quite tricky terrain, it was very mossy. Sometimes it takes over an hour to move a mile in (those) woods. It’s a pretty different terrain than it is in New England.”

Nawrocki said much of the work entailed clearing trees to allow helicopters to get water to the fire line via Bambi buckets – the specialized vessels suspended on a cable – and to monitor smoldering hotspots to prevent them from reigniting and spreading.

“This one little smoldering spot, even though it could be a three-foot spot – a hot day like today, no humidity – it picks up,” he explained.

Nawrocki said he was based in Matagami, a very remote town in Quebec. He mentioned the each morning, firefighters met at a staging area—usually at the local airport—to be flown to the fire line by a French pilot. He said the helicopter could accommodate nine firefighters at a time.

Smoke from the wildfires has caused air quality alerts and evacuations across Canada as well as the United States. By late June, NASA reported that the smoke had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached Europe.

Nawrocki mentioned he is a state arborist and a sawyer, someone trained to fell trees on the fireline. He said the work in Quebec was on a volunteer basis, set up by the Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact, a firefighting and prevention coalition of Northeastern states and adjacent areas in Canada. His crew consisted of 14 DCR firefighters and two from the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. They were joined by four firefighters from Connecticut and one from Vermont.

“By the end of the trip, we were all good friends – sharing stories, sharing laughter, sharing hard work,” Nawrocki said. “Some days are tougher than others, and it only takes one bad egg to spoil it all, so thankfully we didn’t have that.”

He explained this was his seventh assignment with the Northeastern Forest Fire Protection Compact and his second to Quebec, having been to the French-speaking province for firefighting efforts five years ago, a year after going to British Columbia on the west coast for the same purpose.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.

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