Military releases names of victims of CFB Wainwright tragedy

Four service members have been killed in the deadly fire. Sergeant Morgan Wong from Edmonton. Private Sean Farrell from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Private Aidan Golding from North Vancouver. Private Hayden Leichmark from Langley, BC. 39 service members are in hospital. And at last word, 19 of them are in critical condition, many with severe burns. There were about 84 troops in high-intensity combat training at the time. Something like this. This is archival footage, also from Wainwright, in the Urban Warfare Centre. It gives you a sense of some of the assault training, a mock attack that they're carrying out. Another group was throwing hand grenades. Part of their training, aiming to be as realistic as possible, both groups were using live ammunition because they were getting ready to deploy to the Canadian mission on NATO's front line in Latvia. And the military knew that a grass fire had been burning for hours near the training area. The flames we see here, the smoke in the background, were about a kilometer away. But the wind was blowing too. And the military says gusts were below 50 kilometers an hour. Therefore, it was decided training could go ahead. But then the wind surged in intensity in late afternoon and in less than a minute pushed a wall of flames on top of dozens of soldiers. In 30 seconds to a minute, they saw no fire. And then there was a fire right on top of them. Private Aidan Golding among them and his mother has been speaking. That's right. She says he was only 23 years old. He had just joined the military this past February and then months later, given the terrible news that her son had passed away during this training exercise. She says her son liked sports. He loved hockey, baseball, rugby, basketball. She says she was a single mother and told him he had to pick two. She reflects on how she'll remember her son in the wake of his passing. I think Aidan was always the guy that kept everybody's spirits up. I went to both of his graduations at the Army, and that's what his commanding officers would say to me. He was the light of my life. I mean, he really was the light of my life. Her son told her he wanted to live his life to the fullest. You only have one life to live, she said, and that's why he said he decided to join the Canadian Army. Of course, in addition to the four people who died, we're also thinking of the 39 people injured being treated in hospital right now, of those 19 critically injured.