After a staggering number of wildfires in the province and many of them getting too close to communities, Saskatchewan is looking to improve its response to wildfires by adding crop dusting planes to support fire fighting crews.

"Members that participated area of course across the province," said Colin Bevan, Past President of the Saskatchewan Aerial Applicators Association. "There's, I think, seven companies that have met the benchmarks to be approved for supplying these services. There's even spacing [of these pilots] across the province, anyone of those members could be called out and if for some reason they're not available then the call just goes to the closest available member."

26 pilots from the Saskatchewan Aerial Applicators Association have been trained so far. Most of the Province’s firefighting equipment is located in Prince Albert, which is why the province is implementing the assistance of crop dusters who have gone through specialized training over the winter.

Crop dusters are efficient and fast. They have a quick turn around and could drop water four or five times within 50 kilometers.

"As the agriculture aircraft advance in technology, our size and capacity has certainly increased where we're near match, or fiscally we're certainly competitive with those larger airplanes from up north," Bevan said. "Then there's simply the logistics of bringing those airplanes down here, its not cost or time effective."

Bevan added that his plane, for example, can carry 500 to 510 gallons of water with the option of adding foam.

Once things are worked out, seven aerial applicator companies that are spaced rather evenly across the province are trained to provide fast response to blazes if needed and will be dispatched by 911 operators.

Toward the end of the month, once seeding is done, they'll do some practice dumps to test how well it will work.