Firefighting sisters from Pinaymootang First Nation working on the front lines of Manitoba's wildfire effort

Lauren Scott · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 24, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

Two firefighting sisters from Pinaymootang First Nation successful Manitoba's Interlake portion accidental they are looking guardant to returning to the beforehand lines of the provincial wildfire effort pursuing a deployment battling the Nopiming Provincial Park blaze adjacent Bissett.

Delilah Anderson, 22, and Heather Anderson, 21, completed their firefighter grooming past twelvemonth and were sent to Bissett, astir 160 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, earlier this month.

They said it was the 2nd wildfire they had ever fought. 

"We're new, but we're doing thing for our community," said Delilah, who hopes to beryllium a relation exemplary for different young women and girls from Pinaymootang.  

"I similar helping out," she said.

The Nopiming wildfire was much than 224,000 hectares successful size — astir 5 times the country of Winnipeg — arsenic of Sunday, according to the province's astir caller occurrence presumption report.

The fire, which stretches from southbound of Bird River to northbound of Bissett, is inactive retired of control.

Last week, immoderate residents, cottagers and concern owners successful the confederate portion of the parkland were allowed to instrumentality home. Bird, Booster, Flanders and Davidson lakes reopened connected Wednesday, on with Provincial Road 315.  

The sisters said they are passionate astir quality and the animals that unrecorded there. It was hard for them to spot the wood truthful charred, with fewer animals roaming astir the burned-out woods, they said. 

"It's each burned. It conscionable looks beauteous bittersweet implicit there…." Heather said. 

"It was bittersweet to spot however overmuch that has been burnt," Delilah added.

The crew the Andersons were successful was tasked with putting retired hotspots, taking peculiar attraction to cheque low-lying areas wherever the flames could usage underground roots to dispersed further. 

They besides pulled 40-kilogram hoses from 1 tract to the next, helping their squad and others get h2o connected the occurrence wherever it was astir needed. 

"It's benignant of hard connected your backmost erstwhile you're pulling backmost the hoses," Heather said.

"I heard that my unit was the fastest workers due to the fact that we moved 2 antithetic locations wrong 3 days," Heather said.

"We person a beauteous beardown crew," Delilah said. 

The sisters returned location implicit the weekend, aft being connected the crushed for astir a week. A household exigency forced them to caput location aboriginal from their 20-day deployment.

However, they'll beryllium backmost connected the beforehand lines for different 20-day stint starting connected July 7. 

The Andersons were the lone women connected their crew, but they anticipation to animate much young women and girls to beryllium trained arsenic firefighters and articulation them connected the beforehand lines. 

"There's conscionable a batch of young girls successful the assemblage that I privation them to spot what they're susceptible of…. When they spot me, I privation them to deliberation that they could bash it arsenic well," Delilah said, adding that their household members are highly arrogant of her and her sister. 

Although Delilah says it's hard to beryllium distant from her 3 young children and the remainder of her family, she's looking guardant to returning to the beardown bonds she and Heather built successful Bissett.

"You're making a 2nd household retired determination with the unit members that you have," Delilah said.