Firefighters from the North Olympic Peninsula are helping battle blazes in Southern California.
Firefighters are from the Olympic National Park, the Olympic National Forest and Sequim – the latter only non-federal employees from the Peninsula going to fight the wild fires that have burned a combined area about half the size of the Olympic Peninsula.
“All our firefighters are trained in both structural and wildland firefighting,” said Clallam County Fire District No. 3 Chief Steve Vogel in Sequim.
“We’ve had a crew in Eastern Washington all summer.”
The two fire engines with seven firefighters from Sequim are traveling to Southern California for two weeks.
They will be joined by one fire engine and five firefighters from Olympic National Park.
The Olympic National Forest is sending an engine with four firefighters, according to the Puget Sound Interagency Coordination Center in Everett.
Vogel said that one fire engine equipped for structural firefighting left Wednesday afternoon with four firefighters aboard: Derrell Sharp, Jeremy Karapostoles, Travis Anderson and Greg Behan.
It is being joined by four other fire engines from Kitsap County, he said.
A second fire engine equipped for wildland firefighting will leave today and join the other one in Chino, Calif., to receive their orders, Vogel said.
It is staffed by Lynn Horst, Ian Brueckner and Corey Odgers.
“We get reimbursed for time, manpower, equipment usage by the [(California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection] and Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Vogel said.
