In a historically bad year for wildfires across Canada, B.C. had 1,350 fires with an estimated 886,360 hectares of land burned across the province. When it came to fighting two of the worst fires in Vancouver Island’s history, BC Wildfire Service took advantage of Coulson Aviation’s successful night vision aerial firefighting program.
Almost 15 years to the day after testing how effective a helicopter could be dropping water on hot spots at night, the Wesley Ridge fire broke out between Port Alberni and Qualicum Beach.
“The first trial was 22 targets and with 22 loads, we were able to extinguish it and put water in all 22 (targets) and that’s when we knew we had something,” said Wayne Coulson, CEO of the Alberni-based Coulson Aviation.
Using two helicopters during the test near the Alberni Valley Regional Airport, Coulson used night vision goggles and thermal imaging cameras. The thermal cameras were able to see hot spots and could then use laser beams, about the size of a car, that the night vision goggles could see to target the hot spots.
Coulson said while the night vision goggles can see the actual flames, they can’t pick up the hot spots that creep along the ground during forest fires, spreading fire.
“And then we went through 12 additional trials and it became more and more intense,” Coulson said, explaining each time the process got quicker and quicker while his team tweaked what was working well and what wasn’t.
Coulson said his company would attend conferences talking about night flying and many people doubted it was possible; not taking the concept seriously.
One of the other challenges for aerial night firefighting was filling the helicopters with water. In the United States there were some night efforts, but helicopters would have to land at an airport to be filled.
“That wasn’t very efficient because, of course unless you have a fire by an airport, if you only have about one or two loads of 300 to 400 gallons on a load every hour, it’s not going to make a hell of a bit of a difference,” Coulson said. “Our goal was to hover over a water source with (night vision) goggles on and be able to load the helicopter.”
Coulson said government officials didn’t believe it was safe to hover fill at night so on a November night in 2017 a company aircrew spent three hours at the Alberni Valley’s Sproat Lake testing the process.
“We had a clear night in November and the helicopter went in and out of the dip hover filling for three hours. We went up and down,” he said. “We literally shot a video of the helicopter hover filling 100 times.”
The Australian government, which Coulson works with regularly, said they would give the company a shot at it, signing a one-year permit as a trial.
On Christmas Eve 2017 a wildfire started in the middle of the night in the Australian state of Victoria. Coulson said the fire was expected to burn homes that night, but because of the night vision aerial firefighting technology, aircrews were able to stop it before it got out of control.
In 2019 the company got a one-year trial in California. That October, a fire started and strong, dry winds had it projected to burn 2,000 homes. The night-flying helicopters able to hover fill were able to drop water on it around 22 times an hour, Coulson said.
Within two hours, they were able to stop the fire from spreading.
“If you catch a fire quickly, you will kill it and you’ll extinguish it and that was a multi-billion-dollar save because of the homes,” Coulson said.
Since then, Coulson Aviation’s night aerial firefighting program has expanded. During some fires in California they helped battle, most of the flying was done at night because of dangerous winds during the day.
“If we didn’t have night flying capabilities, the fires would have been exponentially larger than they were,” he said.
In summer of 2025 Coulson’s night vision firefighting efforts were able to help the company’s Canadian home when two massive fires—Wesley Ridge by Cameron Lake and Mount Underwood—in the Port Alberni area broke out. It was the first year Coulson had a contract with the B.C. Government for night firefighting and the company worked on both major fires.
“We’re humbled to get this opportunity to be back home, working with the province and for them to embrace some of the standard operating procedures that we’ve learned over time and bringing that back to the province to make it safer for everybody,” Coulson said. “Our goal is to continue to build our business in Canada. We are certainly one of the largest operators in the United States, we are the largest operator in Australia and South America and looking to build our program closer to home and bring that technology and experience back to the Canadian customers and see if we can provide a better tool in the toolbox.”
In 2024 B.C. Wildfire Service had a small trial with two helicopters able to fly at night. After seeing its success, they expanded it for the 2025 wildfire season, contracting more helicopters and personnel.
Bryce Moreira oversees BCWS’s helicopter programs and he said having night flying not only helps the response, but also benefits co-ordination of resources. It allows them to see, from the air, if a fire has jumped a fire guard or sparked in a new area from flying embers.
Another advantage is being able to quickly assess lightning strikes to see if they have caused fires and respond almost immediately.
“We continually learn through different and new experiences, the benefits and some of the areas that we can further expand in those operations,” Moreira said.
Prior to being able to fight fires from the air at night, BCWS was limited in what it could do overnight when fire activity is usually lower. Now, they are able to work almost around the clock on dumping water on fires and helping co-ordinate with ground crews.
“There have been instances when we’ve noticed that being able to put water on a fire overnight with helicopters has allowed that fire to be a lot calmer the next day as crews come onto the fire on that second day into the daytime,” Moreira said. “And they also have a good sense of what the fire has done overnight so it’s allowed them to be more effective and action to the fire is, the following day, a little bit quicker because they have up-to-date intelligence.”
In previous years, Moreira said BCWS teams would need to spend mornings assessing the fire’s overnight activity and planning for the day whereas night vision firefighting allows them to know what the fire is doing constantly.
One of the challenges night vision flying does face is when there is a large amount of smoke from a fire, Moreira said it can keep helicopters from being able to safely fly even with night vision goggles. He said several times helicopters went to assess the Wesley Ridge fire but had to cancel their mission because the smoke made it unsafe to fly.
The province’s wildfire service will be looking into what worked with the night vision firefighting program in 2025 and trying to grow it to be more successful in 2026 and beyond.