LONGVIEW, Texas — The state of California is experiencing one of its toughest fire seasons in history. Fire departments from across the United States sent crews to the west coast to assist with the wildfires.
The Longview Fire Department sent a crew toward the beginning of September and a second near the end. Lt. Dusty Burks was deployed with the second group to help with the Creek Fire at Sierra National Forest.
"I think they were out there around 20 days total and then we flew out there to replace them," Burks said. "Initially, we stayed in a small town called Oakhurst. They moved us to the south side of the fire and we were staying outside of Fresno."
Each crew battled blazes for about two weeks, working 24-hour shifts every other day. Burks says it was a challenging experience.
"It's a tough thing to watch, but at the same time it was, it's a great opportunity to be able to be there for those people and to try to lend a hand," he said. "The Creek Fire that we were on was at 350,000 acres. In the August Complex, which we had a Strike Team on, it was over a million acres. So it's a little different, a little more extreme."
The lieutenant says when his crew left, the Creek Fire was about 40% contained. Now, it's up to around 60%.
"We deal with a lot more wildland-urban interface type scenarios, as opposed to large fires, burning acres and acres and acres," Burks said. "We don't experience wildfires on the same scale as they do.”
The Longview firefighters returned to East Texas last week, and many were back on duty this week. The department had discussed sending a third crew but has no plans to do so, at this time.
"The way that this works, though, is that they [California] bring in resources from the outside, they kind of rehab their resources, get everything back together," he explained. "Then they release those types of resources from out of state and whatnot.”
Burks says their time in California will also help East Texas.
"I think being able to take what we got out there and adapt that back to how we operate here in Longview, is the biggest benefit that we come across," Burks said.