A Yolo County firefighting strike team has entered its fifth week on the road, arriving Saturday at the Rough fire in the Sierra National Forest, east of Fresno.
The 22-member team, which includes a four-person engine and strike team leader from the Davis and UC Davis fire departments, has been assigned to 12-hour shifts in the Hume Lake area, Division Chief Joe Tenney said Monday.
“They’ve been doing structure protection just in case the fire comes in there,” Tenney said of the wildland blaze, which as of Tuesday had consumed just over 53,000 acres since it began with a lightning strike on July 31.
The Rough fire marks the strike team’s fifth consecutive assignment during what has been an unprecedented wildfire season.
First, the team was deployed July 22 to the Wragg fire in Napa and Solano counties. From there they traveled to the Lowell fire in Nevada County, the Fork complex in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and the Cuesta fire in San Luis Obispo County.
Each firefighter serves between seven and 14 days on the strike team before switching out with another crew member and gaining some much-needed rest, Tenney said. The strike team’s costs, including overtime pay and apparatus costs, typically are covered by the state.
Elsewhere in Yolo County, a unit from the Winters Fire Department left for Washington state on Saturday to assist with wildland fires for a two-week stretch.
An Office of Emergency Services engine with a captain, engineer and two firefighters arrived Monday in Omak, Wash., and the team has since been assigned to structure protection near the Okanogan Complex — a series of five wildfires that have burned nearly 262,000 acres, said Winters Fire Chief Aaron McAlister.
McAlister also is in Washington to serve as an agency representative overseeing the care and welfare of California’s firefighting resources.
It’s the first time in McAlister’s memory that a Winters fire crew has assisted with an out-of-state incident.
“It’s been an extraordinary season,” McAlister said of the fires in the Pacific Northwest. He noted that Washington crews have helped battle California blazes in years past, “so this is a payback. They’ve been there for us, and I’m just glad to be able to go up there and help take care of business.”
And it’s not just firefighters who are being called in to lend a hand. Two Davis police officers had been summoned to help protect evacuated residences in Siskiyou County, but their assignment was canceled before they could head north, spokesman Lt. Ton Phan said.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene
