SALT LAKE CITY — Firefighters from departments across Utah are heading west this week as wildfires rage in California.
At least 10 departments — ranging from small to large, from Cache Valley to southern Utah — had sent engines and personnel to help their California counterparts as of Monday night, with 40 more firefighters from eight other departments slated to deploy Tuesday.
Fires burned at both ends of the state Monday, as a wildfire that began early that morning near the Getty Center destroyed eight homes in Los Angeles. Hundreds of miles north, the 74,000-acre Kincade Fire had forced the largest evacuation in Sonoma County’s history on its path toward Santa Rosa.
By Monday morning, some Utahns had already arrived in northern California to help battle the blaze, with more on the way. Exchanging resources in times of emergency is a regular occurrence in the fire world, with Utah departments stepping up to help California crews when needed and vice versa, according to Jason Curry, spokesman for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.
“California’s fire season is a little different from ours, so it works out OK,” Curry said. “We can receive help from them in our busy time, and now that things in the state of Utah are slowing down, we do have some resources available to go and help.”
As of Monday, Curry was aware of 11 engines and about 30 people from 10 departments already headed to California, from Smithfield to Hurricane — “from north to south, literally.” Most would probably stay for two or three weeks, he said.
For southwestern Utah, where crews are still regularly responding to wildfires, determining how much assistance to send was a matter of balancing needs at home with the need in California, said Mike Melton, area fire management officer for the Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands.
Two brush trucks from Hurricane Valley Fire District and the Cedar City Fire Department arrived to fight the Kincade Fire on Sunday night, but Melton said he didn’t anticipate sending any more resources from his part of the state.
“Even though it’s cooled off, the wind is still howling,” Melton said, noting the dry conditions in southwestern Utah. “We stand ready to help them when we can, but the homefront comes first.”
Farther north, three firefighters from the Lone Peak Fire District in Utah County had set off before the crack of dawn Sunday, and a brush truck and personnel from Provo were in California by early Monday afternoon.
Other departments sending engines included Draper, which lost one of its firefighters to a California wildfire last year.
On Aug. 13, 2018, Draper Battalion Chief Matthew Burchett was killed while fighting the Mendocino Complex Fire in Northern California. Burchett was hit by tree debris that fell as a result of an aircraft dropping nearly 20,000 gallons of fire retardant too close to the ground, according to investigators. His widow filed a lawsuit against Cal Fire and the aircraft company last month.
Engines and personnel from Bluffdale, Smithfield, North Logan, Utah County and the Forest Service were also headed to California as of Monday evening, according to Curry. He expected more departments would send assistance in the days to come.
On Monday night, the Utah Division of Emergency Management announced that 40 additional firefighters from eight other departments would deploy on Tuesday under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, a state-to-state mutual aid system organized by state emergency management agencies. The deployment will last two weeks.
Those 40 firefighters will make up one Type 3 Strike Team and one task force, the division said. The strike team will consist of three engines from Unified Fire Authority, one from Park City and one from Millard County, while the task force will be made up of engines from Layton, Orem, Wasatch County, West Valley City and Murray.