VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- A nine-member team of Canadian wildfire experts is headed to Australia to help combat the fires raging through the southeastern state of Victoria.
The crew of specialists is from British Columbia, and is going in response to a request from Australian officials, provincial fire information officer Kim Steinbart told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
"They've requested some operations chiefs, some planning chiefs and some fire behavioral specialists, so these are people who have a specialization in the characteristics of fires," she said.
The team leaves Vancouver Tuesday, and is expected to spend four weeks in Australia, where more than 400 fires have killed at least 181 people, leveled towns and scorched hundreds of thousands of acres, the report said.
Some 52 British Columbia firefighters flew to Australia in 2007 to help during a spate of fires, Steinbart said.
