Saskatchewan firefighter of village burnt by wildfire says province lacked resources

REGINA – A Saskatchewan firefighter who was on the front lines before half his community burned down in the summer says the province provided little reinforcements. 

Harley Vliegenthart says the small volunteer firefighting team at Denare Beach hardly saw the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency in the days before the blaze devastated the village in northeast Saskatchewan. 

On Wednesday, Vliegenthart was a legislature guest of the Opposition NDP, which demanded Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government provide answers on how it responded to the wildfire. 

“(There) were next to no reinforcements,” Vliegenthart told reporters. “The (Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency), we barely saw them throughout the entire situation.

“We had water bombers in the air for (only) about half an hour.” 

Earlier in the day, NDP northern affairs critic Jordan McPhail asked the province why more wasn’t done to save the community of 700 people. 

“Denare Beach burned and (nearby) Flin Flon was spared,” he told the assembly. 

Public Safety Minister Tim McLeod said Denare Beach was defended by more resources than McPhail alleged.

McLeod said that on May 19, immediately after the fire was reported, the agency responded with two air tankers, helicopters and ground crews. The fire grew substantially in the days that followed, he added. 

“(It was) extremely aggressive fire behaviour, unprecedented fire behaviour,” McLeod said.

“These extreme fires required an indirect attack, as opposed to a direct attack, to maintain the safety and the well-being of our forest firefighters.”

McLeod also accused the NDP of not being factual about what happened. “What I won’t do is exploit a tragedy … for political gain,” he said.

McPhail fired back, saying he won’t be lectured on what he and his constituents saw. “Will that minister stand up right now and quit? Or better yet, will the premier stand up and fire him today?” he said.

Vliegenthart said the minister’s version of events don’t align with what was happening on the ground.

“Someone was asleep at the wheel and it never got through to who it needed to get through to,” he said.

On the day the village was evacuated, he said, members of his crew had been running around with their “heads chopped off,” installing sprinklers in nearby Creighton and fighting flames near Flin Flon.

In the days that followed, someone at the public safety agency advised the crew to get back to Denare Beach because the fire was getting close to the village, said Vliegenthart.

“I can’t say with any sort of certainty, at any point in time, did anybody have the situation under control,” Vliegenthart said in a later interview.

“It was a little too late,” he said. “It’s just failure across the board.”

The NDP and Denare Beach village council have called on the province for a public inquiry into the fire response to ensure everyone’s perspectives are heard. 

The province has declined to do so. Instead, it said there will be a third-party review. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2025.