Volunteer Fire Departments in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and Forestry's Natural Resources Division staff and equipment form the core of the forest fire mutual aid suppression team approach. Four of the five 4 X 4 tankers are placed under contract with volunteer fire departments at Souris, Georgetown, Wellington, and West Point. Each of these fire departments is responsible for responding to forest fires in a much larger area than their structural fire control district. This places additional stress on their firefighters as it means that members of these fire departments spend more time responding to and fighting fires. Their commitment to their communities also means that these Departments can use these specialized off road fire vehicles to assist with other fire suppression activities in their community when the equipment is not required for forest fire control.
Mutual aid is also the core of the forest fire reporting system .
Anyone seeing a forest fire in the province is responsible for promptly reporting the fire. Early reporting is essential to the control of forest fires as the total perimeter of active fire increases as time passes. If the fire has dry fuels, the fire grows larger and its heat intensity builds. When conditions are right for high intensity fire, this can lead to crown fire, a rapidly spreading, extreme fire event with fire running through the tops of conifer trees . These types of fire generate megawatts of heat output for each metre of the advancing fire edge and, because of the high winds created by the intense fire, they are capable of dropping burning embers hundreds of yards ahead of the advancing fire.