WINNIPEG -- Andrew Prokopchuk and Gerry Rosset are back home after spending 38-days down under, helping fire crews in Australia battle several wildfires throughout the region.

The two weren't among front line firefighters, but instead were hard at work as part of the Incident Management Team.

Despite not being on the front lines, the two were close enough to be certain they’ve never seen fires like the ones burning in Australia.

"I'm just glad we don't get fires like that," said Prokopchuk. "Fuel types are totally different than here, for one thing, and drought, they had two years without any substantial rain at all. And then you get a windy day and it’s just, yeah, we have seen some pretty crazy stuff.

"We wouldn't expect hardwood trees to burn the way they do there," said Rosset. "The fuel loading is happening almost annually, even though they have a burn, it only takes six months to a year and the fuel load is right back to where it was. Very volatile conditions."

Prokopchuk said all the Canadians who were down helping were received extremely well, and they even had people coming up to them and giving them hugs to show how appreciative they were.

"We spoke to a lot of people that have lost farms, buildings, houses, cottages, so yeah, it really affects people hard," said Prokopchuk.

No relief in sight

The two, who were stationed in New South Wales, said they expect it will be a while before these fires are under control, due to the size of some of the blazes and the conditions in the area.

"The one fire that we were on was over 400,000 hectares, it was over 1,000 kilometres perimeter around the fire itself and it just kept on growing substantially everyday. Everyday there was a hard wind, it grew that much more," said Prokopchuk.

"There's no real good rains in sight for months, they are talking, it's going to be a hot dry summer for them yet, they have a battle ahead of themselves yet."

Learning from Australian crews

Rosset added crews in Australia do things differently compared to Canada and they were learning different techniques throughout the trip.

"The firefighting there is different techniques, for example, they do much more back burning than we do here, so maybe we would apply some of those techniques here," said Rosset.

Despite being away from home for more than a month, the two agreed they would be ready to go back.

"It was a good experience, we were glad to help out over there, and we would likely go again if we were asked to," said Rosset.