Three Edmonton volunteers, including two firefighters, have returned from a five-day trip to Ukraine where they delivered 14 tonnes of essential lifesaving equipment.
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“This equipment is what they need to save lives and get people out of the rubble and fight these fires that are raging everywhere from all these attacks,” Kevin Royle, founder and director of Firefighter Aid Ukraine, told Global News.
The three volunteers who flew to Ukraine recently managed to unload the plane, load their trucks and deliver the equipment directly to the state emergency services within 24 hours.
Mr. Royle, who is a firefighter in Edmonton, has made several trips like this over the past decade. The organization he heads has been shipping containers and small parcels to Ukraine for eight years now.
However, the last journey was a bit different given the scale of the invasion the Ukrainians are experiencing.
“I was worried. I wanted to make sure that the equipment arrived at its destination, without being taken at the border, ”he explained to the media.
Mr. Royle said he was happy that the equipment served its purpose, but sad that it had to be used in this type of situation.
The president of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce of Alberta, Vitaliy Milentyev, was also part of the trip.
“Crossing the border was a very eye-opening experience,” Milentyev said.
According to him, Ukraine no longer looked like the country he knew and hoped that the world would start to take more drastic measures in this war.
“For people outside Ukraine, it may look like a local conflict. For people inside the country, it is a full-fledged war,” he commented.
Reference-www.journaldemontreal.com