B.C. firenado sucks up and melts hose

On Sunday, Canadian firefighter and paramedic M.C. Schidlowsky posted video to her Instagram account showing a fire tornado near Vanderhoof, B.C., sucking a crew's fire hose almost 200 feet into the air, despite the crew's best efforts to wrestle it back in a tug of war with the twister.

'Fire tornado destroyed our line.

In the video, firefighters try to control a hose that was ripped into the air by extreme winds as a fire rages nearby. "That's definitely a first".

Firefighter M.C. Schidlowsky posted the clip on Instagram, which showed a long white pipe being pulled away in swirling smoke. There, a firefighter unit was attempting to tame a wildfire when it suddenly turned into a raging tornado of flames that lasted over 45 minutes.

Fire tornadoes are caused by a risky mix of heat and wind, which can then start to rotate like a tornado.

"It's like a dust devil or a fire whirl - it sucks in the debris and that's what makes it a fire tornado", he said.

She says the crew had been working seven days in a row for 16 hours at a time to stop the flames engulfing areas.

The fire, which peaked at 20,800 hectares, is still burning, but is classified as "being held", meaning officials don't expect it to grow any larger.

For some B.C. residents it may seem like the wildfire season is over for this year, but fire crews are still battling blazes across the province. There are still more than 397 active fires, said Tower.