Canadian wildfires: Te Awamutu brothers Matt and Tom Otto help fight wildfires

Matt Otto (left) and Tom Otto in the helicopter as they head to fight the Canadian wildfires.

Te Awamutu helicopter pilot brothers Matt Otto, 30, and Tom Otto, 28, are flying high above Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories fighting wildfires.

Operating intermediate AS350 B3s, the pair have been working for Acasta Heliflight over the past two summers, helping during the Canadian wildfire season.

The pair have 20 years of experience between them (Matt Otto 13 years and Tom Otto seven years) and are in Canada from early May until mid-October.

The brothers said they wanted to give something back to people and use their services to make a difference to people in need.

Usually, the wildfires burn from May to early August, but this year they began in March, increasing in intensity during June and they were still out of control.

All 13 Canadian provinces and territories have been affected.

As of September 4 there had been 6154 fires, burning 164,414 square kilometres - around 5 per cent of Canada’s entire forest area. There have been six deaths as a result of the fires.

On that same date, there were 1078 active wildfires, with about 66 per cent of those out of control.

“Canadian wildfire officials said on Friday that the 2023 wildfire season is easily the worst ever recorded,” Matt Otto said.

“The current fire we are working on has burnt just under 450,000 hectares of land.”

The helicopters are often used for direct and indirect fire suppression.

They’re there to protect life and property - also getting people out of critical areas that need to be evacuated immediately.

“Yellowknife is the current area fire that we are fighting. The town has been fully evacuated, so it’s interesting times with nothing open,” Tom Otto says.

“There are all different sorts of machines on the fires as they serve different purposes.”

Usually, there were 10 to 15 aircraft working on any one fire - air tankers, water bombers and helicopters and it came down to a team effort to keep things running.

Working 12-hour days, for up to 42 days straight, the fires didn’t allow for much rest.

“The worst part of the job is not being able to stop a fire from consuming somebody’s home,” Matt Otto said.

“The most rewarding part would be protecting a complete town or city and helping/providing the hard-working firefighters much-needed support.”

To keep up to date with the Otto brothers’ work, head to Acasta HeliFlight Inc. on Facebook.