Webinars
Maximizing Wildfire Resources
April 14, 2023 at 12:30pm

In this webinar, Fire Chief Jamie Coutts, a fire service consultant with extensive experience in wildfire suppression, will address best practices for efficient firefighter training and tactics for deploying resources to make the most of them.

Speaker

Jamie Coutts
Jamie Coutts is the fire chief for the City of Chestermere in Alberta and a consultant with Sea Hawk who works with fire departments to evaluate and fix problems within their systems as well as provide municipal and First Nation leadership training. Coutts has delivered talks to 468 fire halls across Canada over the past 10 years as well as 22 talks at disaster management conferences.

During his former tenure as fire chief for Lesser Slave Regional Fire Service,  he had the opportunity to lead a five-hall, 125 member regional fire service, and a search and rescue team. In 2011 The Slave Lake Wildland Fire burned down 440 homes in his region, including 35 per cent of the Town of Slave Lake. This disaster prompted major changes and challenges. Over the next eight years, they rebuilt two fire halls, and created a FireSmart crew (only one of its kind in Canada). They also built a 12 acre “Disaster Village” training site and began training people to be prepared to assist all of Alberta with disasters. This help included the  2013 Southern Alberta floods, eight train derailments, 2015 High Level fires, 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire and the High Level complex fires in 2019. Their constant interagency training and exercises helped prepare thousands of responders in Alberta and beyond.

Coutts is an active member of Canadian Volunteer Fire Service Association (CVFSA) and the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association. He is host of the Podcast – Growing Up Fire  and hosted television crews to film two seasons of Discovery Canada’s “Hellfire Heroes” 2018 and 2019.