Three South Australian firefighters are among 71 from across Australia heading to the United States to help battle wildfires raging across several states in the country’s west.
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The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise announced Thursday that top fire managers representing various U.S. agencies requested about 70 fire managers and specialists from the two countries.
Firefighters in Washington state were grateful Tuesday to learn that reinforcements were arriving from Down Under as they kept a wary eye on rising temperatures and winds that threatened to expand what’s already the largest wildfire on record in the state.
“Their logistics skills will be in high demand, especially managing aircraft to fight fires and ferry supplies to remote locations”, Kevin O’Connor of New Zealand’s National Rural Fire Authority said in a statement.
“The fires, and the resources pouring into them, are renewing attention on government funding to fighting and preventing wildfires – an issue that has seen heated debate in the last few years amid federal budget cuts and rising costs”, The Christian Science Monitor reported in early August.
“This gives us an opportunity to plug some of those critical holes we have in our incident management organizations”, he said. So far, more than 11,000 square miles have burned.
There are more than 15 large fires in Idaho, and dozens of homes there have been destroyed.
The nations have been firefighting partners for more than 50 years, and are able to lend out firefighters because the severest part of fire seasons occur at opposite times of the year. The U.S. sent firefighters overseas in 2007, including Mike Ferris, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.
The worldwide firefighters are prepared for the conditions in the Pacific Northwest, Warren Heslip, a firefighter from Southland, New Zealand, told the AP.
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“And I’ve developed friendships and we still keep in touch all the time”, Costeniro says.
