Photo credit: Graham Helicopters

By Regan Bartel

Graham Helicopters coming to the rescue

Rockets player aids in fire fight

Aug 24, 2023 | 1:00 PM

The house. The hanger. The hockey rink.

Rinse and repeat for Kelowna Rockets forward Max Graham.

The 19-year-old, preparing for the upcoming season, is also a member of the ground crew with Graham Helicopters.

Graham’s father, John, has had his rotary-wing aircraft company contracted by the BC Forestry Service to fight forest fires, not only recently here in the Okanagan, and Shuswap, but earlier this summer in Victoria.

“It has been devastating watching these fires going on in West Kelowna and Kelowna”, Graham told RocketFAN. “I’m helping with whatever the pilots need. If it’s fueling them up, getting parts, and washing the helicopters after fighting fires, that’s what I do.”

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It makes for long days for the power forward, who downplays his role in comparison to what type of procession is needed to drop 10,000 liters of water from high above on a fast-moving forest fire below.

“At one point, we couldn’t fly because the visibility with all the smoke was so bad”, Graham recalled. “I’ve been doing a little bit of training [to fly helicopters], and the type of maneuvers the pilots are doing are unbelievable. It is amazing the skill and practice it takes in tough conditions.”

While Graham hasn’t witnessed the fire activity from the air himself, he can appreciate the long hours pilots must put in to get the job done.

“You can’t be daydreaming at all”, Graham seeing the mental and physical toll it takes to navigate a machine with a Bambie Bucket (invented by a Salt Spring Island entrepreneur) to pick up and drop water. “They [pilots] are breathing in the smoke. You are close to the flames. There is no air conditioning in the helicopters, plus it is hot out, and you are dealing with all the radio chatter about where you should drop the water. On top of that, you must fly with skill.”

While Graham’s father has well over 15 thousand hours of flying experience, Max is hoping to follow in his footsteps someday when he too is able to jump behind the controls.

“It actually makes me more excited to get up in the air”, Graham asked if the recent fires have dashed his enthusiasm for fighting fires by air. “Seeing them [pilots] fly all over the place and seeing how what they do impact communities, it makes me want to do it more.”

Lending a helping hand to fight fires, which officials are estimating have either destroyed or damaged 200 homes, Graham does find time to work out for the upcoming hockey season and doesn’t miss any ice time as he joins several junior, college, and NHL veterans at the Capital News Centre.

One of the fortunate ones, Graham’s family home wasn’t evacuated, which is the benefit of not having lakefront property nor being situated on a mountainside.

“We were able to stick around the property. We are out by the airport”, Graham said with a sense of relief in his voice. “We are in a flat area with all the mountains around us. The fires get the most dangerous when they are on slopes, and the wind helps them travel so fast.”

When asked if he envisioned this type of fire activity the Okanagan has experienced in the last week, Graham too believed the region was on borrowed time.

“We had been lucky not to have forest fire smoke around here this summer, but it was just super dry.

“Last Thursday night I came off the ice in Winfield and it looked like an apocalypse.”