Air quality [infer pollution] in Canada is measured on a scale of 1 - 10 where 10 is the worst.

In early August, I arrived at the Kamloops Airport which is a 4 hours drive northeast of Vancouver, deep in the Cariboo Mountains of British Columbia. Along the way, the CBC national radio was suggesting to turn the truck around as the provincial state of emergency generated by the historically aggressive wildfires forced whole communities out of their homes.  

The normally stunning vista was a tobacco stain around the car not all that dissimilar to driving at night. An environmental first for Kamloops was the air pollution index (API) cracking 47! Apart from the blatantly obvious need to revisit what exactly is the "norm" for the API, reaching just 10 has asthmatics being restricted indoors, old lungs scrambling for oxygen cylinders and a warning that being outside is dangerous for humans since evidently, we need a little bit more oxygen to hydrocarbon ratio in each breath. 

I shelved my plans to get a run in and focused on getting through a check ride in challenging low vis with the legendary Gerry Kearney.  

On the ride, the cockpit was uncomfortable with the normally ultra-reliable AS350B2 Arriel 1D1 engine constantly cutting to idle to prove I can still autorotate backward, sideways and sometimes in the hover.  

As the OAT needle pushed 34 degrees, I had other excuses for the sweat patches as we explored the performance envelope to prove just how forgiving an AS350 is in the right hands.  

The Canucks are a pragmatic people but as our "special" VFR approval crashed to under ¼ mile and IFR inbound flights went missed, Gerry decided the good times were all gone and we were bound to moving on. With the windows wound up tight and the Air Conditioning set to Antartica, I bailed out of Kamloops an hour West to Cache Creek.  

I heard Cache Creek before I saw it.  

The atmosphere echoed the sound of Bell 214's, 212's and an S61 as the sun filtered through 8000 feet of apocalyptic twilight. You could openly stare at the sun in the middle of the day. 

Three miles away was the source of the province-wide disaster - Elephant Hill, attracting dry lightning in mid-July that ignited the fire that urged winds to rush into the valleys with gusts over 30kts.  

Years of no fires and lax forestry management were perfect conditions for an already schizophrenic fire to cross guards and seed into pine slash which furiously ignited like signal fires across the mountain tops in the Lord of the Rings. Like dominos, the slash piles exploded and the fire rampaged into fresh pine erasing hectares of ranch land and advancing on homes and property with ease.  

I was in Cache a full two weeks before a change of wind direction enabled me to actually see Elephant Hill and it revealed a fire behavior that physically flattened trees with the speed of its advance, leaving behind what could only be Hades - a wasted scorched earth void of life blackened and pummelled. 

The smoke permeated the hotel room, the restaurant, your luggage, the helicopter, your brain - there was just no escape. 

After 8 hours of flying the AS350 or EC120 each day, my eyes were burning, my clothes stunk and another pilot who recently quit smoking, lit up again seeing as there was no good reason not to add nicotine to the mix.

By the time my 3 weeks were up, over 1,000,000 hectares of prime British Columbia either had been or was burning uncontrollably. The fire had the steering wheel and the ground crews, fire commanders and pilots labored in atrocious conditions to redirect the flow of the front away from people and structures.

With every horrible disaster, there is an opportunity for humanity to band together, display strength, courage, and compassion in the face of uncertain odds. This was shown no truer that from the firefighting and aviation communities who worked through brutal conditions to fend of these almost uncontrollable beasts. Aided by the Mexican, American, Australian and New Zealand Fire services who dispatched contingents of experienced Incident Commanders and manpower to the effort, in addition to the numerous pilots, engineers and their aircraft who played their part. Safe to say that no aircraft were without a forest service contract. 

Seasons change and the certainty that winter was coming and the snow would fly means the fires will cease. I say cease because fire is cunning and it will hibernate underground for winter, slowly eating away fuel as it waits for Spring... if there's anything left to burn.

2018 might be interesting.