Charlotte County’s Cooke Aquaculture has sent trucks, a side-by-side ATV, a support trailer with three high-pressure water pumps, 60 communications radio batteries, and other relief supplies to help bring the Bocabec wildfire, just outside of Saint Andrews, N.B., under control.
“Cooke is a family company and a significant number of our employees live in Charlotte County. We want to support our employees, particularly those that do volunteer as firefighters in their local community and are called into duty,” says Joel Richardson, vice president of communications at Cooke.
“The Cooke family believes very strongly in being able to support their local communities and keep people safe by utilizing our equipment.”
The company says it has at least a dozen of its own employees on the front lines of the fire which started in the wooded area outside of the town of Saint Andrews on Sunday afternoon.
As of Monday afternoon, the fire stood at 500 acres and was three kilometres wide at its widest spot. Between 250 and 500 homes have been evacuated in the area with no word yet on when it will be safe enough for people to return.
In addition to the firefighting resources, the company is also working with the Charlotte County community to help provide food and beverage to volunteer firefighters.
“Today we sent out 300 salmon burgers from our St. George processing plant down to Saint Andrews to the fire hall, along with a self-contained barbecue trailer and staff that will set up at the rear of the hall, to barbecue with volunteers from the local Kiwanis Club in Saint Andrews,” Richardson says. “That will be taking place throughout the afternoon and into the evening.”
Cooke is also helping out at the Shelburne County, N.S., fire which was still out of control as of Monday afternoon, encompassing a massive 6,200 hectares and forcing the evacuation of 450 homes in the region.
Richardson says several Cooke employees in that region, who work at salmon farms in the Sandy Point and Shelburne Harbour area, are also volunteer firefighters.
“They’ve gone to help battle the Shelburne County fire that’s really quite out of control and quite large, and we’re also providing food and beverages to the local fire departments to help support them at this difficult time,” Richardson says.
Richarson says that Cooke’s operations in Shelburne County have not been impacted so far, but he was uncertain about the situation in Shelburne saying that there were increasing road closures in the area.
As well, in Charlotte County, while there was a power interruption in the region, Cooke has backup power and operations at the Bayside and Oak Bay area freshwater hatchery facilities were able to continue.
“They have not been directly impacted, thankfully. This is one of the reasons why some of our employees have been able to go and help volunteer with the fire department in Saint Andrews. So they’re there working directly with the fire chief and the rest of the firefighters in that community right now.”
At a press conference in Saint Andrews on Monday afternoon, Premier Blaine Higgs echoed that sentiment, saying he was providing the government’s support to let the people with the expertise do their jobs in dealing with the fire.
“Our role is to know that the community is well supported. We’re here as a provincial government to be part of the solution and to provide whatever additional resources are needed to meet the needs of the community.”
Richardson says he’s never seen anything like this from a wildfire perspective in his time at Cooke, but as with other natural disasters or other times of crisis, Cooke is willing and able to lend its resources to provide support.
“Typically our operations are in rural coastal communities, and Charlotte County is a rural coastal community. We believe that we need to come together to help support one another and help put our equipment into use to help keep people safe.”
Alex Graham is a reporter with Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
