Three engines from north Clark County departments traveled south Thursday to provide aid to Southern California in an effort to not only assist fire crews battling the fires raging in the city, but gain valuable experience if an emergency of that magnitude were to occur locally.
An engine crew from Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue (CCFR) and Clark County Fire District 10 and 3 departed from CCFR Station 21 on Thursday, Jan. 9, to go to Los Angeles, California, which has experienced significant devastation from wildfires last week.
“We did send an engine as part of a local strike team that went to California in late September, early October, and so it’s really just an opportunity for our firefighters and our company officers, our captains, to see how you would integrate into a larger incident if we were to have an area-wide disaster,” CCFR Chief John Nohr said. “We don’t have them very often, and the scale of having to deal with it is a lot different than our day-to-day operations. So, it’s an opportunity to help our neighbors, you know, but at the same time also pick up some experience on that.”
The firefighting community answers calls when an agency or area is in need, both in state and out of state, Nohr said, as crews from California would assist with fires in Washington if need be, as they have done in the past.
“America is you help out your neighbors when they need it, and this is, you know, if we have an incident where we’ve got to call people from Oregon or California, they’ll be there for us,” he said. “So this is our opportunity to do that.”
One of the firefighters traveling with the CCFR crew already has experience fighting wildfires. Ty Estes came to the fire district two years ago after working for over a decade with the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Estes, who is originally from Ridgefield, wanted to come back to the community, Nohr said.
“So when the opportunity came up to get hired with CCFR, he left DNR and came to us, but he has some really good skills in that way,” Nohr said. “In fact, when we had the Jenny Creek fire a year and a half ago, he actually took over a major portion of that operation just because he has the experience with the wildland portion.”
Estes is traveling with the CCFR four-person engine crew as a strike team leader.
Usually, crews would send brush rigs to wildfires, Nohr said, but California requested 200 extra type-1 engines from surrounding states on Tuesday, Jan. 7. California pays for local crews’ time fighting fires in the state.
“These are structural fire engines,” Nohr said. “This is what rolls out of your neighborhood firehouse, and so they’re going to go down and protect houses and fight fires in the houses where they need it. They’ll probably also provide a little bit of relief because some of those firefighters, by the time those resources roll in from the different states … the firefighters locally, they’re exhausted.”
Nohr said sometimes a wildfire crew is on duty for 36 to 48 straight hours. As crews from out of state come in, the aid allows the local crews to take a break.
“We step in and protect houses that haven’t had an issue yet and try to mop up some of the things that are going on,” Nohr said. “Because it’s still active, they may actually get involved in some fire attacks protecting houses and businesses, structures.”
Roughly 45 engines from Washington headed to the Los Angeles area and could be there for up to 14 days, plus a travel day on each side, Nohr said.
