Firefighters from throughout the country converged onto Los Angeles County, California, as the Palisades and Eaton fires raged through the urban interface of the massive metro area. Among those fire crews included firefighters from Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue, Clark County fire districts 3 and 10.
Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue Capt. Kenny Bjur, a wildland strike team leader-in-training, reflected on the experience in California and the valuable experience firefighters gained for the likely scenario that wildfire strikes will reach southwest Washington’s own urban interface. Local crews returned from the fire assignment on Saturday, Jan. 25.
“It was total destruction,” Bjur said. “It was amazing the amount of burned residences, buildings, businesses, I mean everything, cars — just total destruction. We were on the Palisades fire for the duration of our deployment down there in the Pacific Palisades area, and, yeah, the amount of loss that they faced was astronomical.”
Bjur’s fire engine strike team was made up of CCFR’s crew, two other local crews and a crew from Wenatchee Valley and Chelan. As Bjur is training to become a strike team leader, he said the experience in California was invaluable to him.
“Going down there, you manage a team of five engines, and being able to bring that back here as both an engine captain and a strike team leader in Washington helps me bring that experience back to manage those resources in the event that we have stuff like that or even just on our day-to-day operations,” Bjur said.
Bjur said, while in Southern California, he learned a lot about logistical management, which includes crew assignments and prioritization of daily operations.
“If we were to have an incident, going down there and being able to train and work in that environment and bring it back here is invaluable experience that we don’t get very often around here,” he said. “So when we do get it here, I can take the experiences I learned down there on managing those resources and the strike team.”
Bjur said, a lot of the time, his strike team didn’t necessarily attack flames, but his group protected structures by preparing homes that could be saved for when fire reached. Homes with defensible space, such as a non-combustible 5 foot border around the structure, are far easier to save, which he explained is crucial for homeowners in southwest Washington to take into account.
He said the fire departments took into consideration homes that are salvageable or not if reached by fire. A home with defensible space will more likely survive a passing wildfire.
“Having shrubs and trees and stuff all right up next to your house, you need that space, and if those catch fire, it’s going to run up against the house and catch the house on fire,” Bjur said. “And we saw lots of stuff down there that was very overgrown. … There were a lot of structures that were in grass severely overgrown. The landscaping style that they had down there isn’t about the defensible space, and they had lots of shrubs and bushes and ornamental stuff right up next to the house, which obviously contributes to the spread of fire [and] not being able to defend houses.”
Bjur said bringing that knowledge back home, where large trees and landscaping around the home are common, reaffirms the importance of defensible space. He added that he also saw on multiple occasions a pile of materials and clutter ignite a home because of flying embers in the high winds, which led to further extensive home loss and wildfire spread.
“That defensible space is vitally important to being able to save your residents if it is impacted by a fire,” Bjur said, adding that the Jenny Creek Road Fire near La Center in 2023 was the first major wildfire in recent years that took place in CCFR territory’s urban interface. “Jenny Creek Road is just the first major one we’ve had in our area, you know, probably more in the future. It’s inevitable as we expand out into that area and people want to live in those areas. So again, having that defensible space definitely helps us.”