The wildfires racing across eastern Washington have stretched firefighters so thin – and prompted so many offers for help – that state officials for the first time are inviting ordinary citizens to join the battle.
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Those interested should contact the coordinators ahead of time listed at On this Department of Natural Resources Website to give their desired role, existing fire qualifications, location, and contact information. Then, officials said, the people at Saturday’s training would be called out to the scene and paid as necessary.
The Washington State Department of Natural Resources needs your help. President Barack Obama said that the fires had become a federal emergency on Friday as well. He said that the effort managed to drive out a lot of people with dozers or backhoes from fire camps that wanted to help. Unfortunately, the weather isn’t cooperating, with Friday’s gusts called to be as high as 50 miles per hour , with unfavorable wind shifts.
More tragically, the blaze was responsible for the death of three US Forest Service firefighters on Wednesday, all of which were identified Friday as Tom Zbyszewski, 20, Andrew Zajac, 26, and Richard Wheeler, 31. The legislature had just passed a bill which made it easier for citizens to be recruited to help firefighters by limiting the liability in cases where anything went wrong.
“We can use the help, with our resources spread across most of the state, but yes, we needed a way to consolidate the interest and vet the volunteers”, he said.
The state has even set up a few training centers so that this problem can be rectified and that volunteers can become proficient.
The move comes as the Washington fires were declared a federal emergency.
While the stress on resources has angered some residents, they also have emphasized their support for firefighters and emergency workers – including those who died and were injured.
There were 75 people in one class Saturday, which officials said was one of the smaller classes of the day. Two of them have already been released.
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Some of the small towns threatened by fire are popular among tourists – sunny and warm escapes for people on the typically wetter west side of the Cascades.
