CENTRAL TEXAS (KXXV) — As temperatures rise, it boils down to team effort to make a difference.
25 News producer Taylor Helmes reached out to the Texas A&M Forest Service about Central Texas firefighters' impact in Northern California.
"A hundred engines from Texas have driven halfway across the country, here to California, here to our little spot of Northern California to help so we are extremely appreciative of the governor and of the response from Texas,” said Public Information Officer at CAL FIRE Butte County Fire Department Rick Carhart.
The Texas A&M Forest Service was part of Texas's response to the park fire that's been burning in Northern California for more than three weeks.
While crews have already started working their way home to Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott made another request for 200 more resources to be deployed across the state as wildfire threats increase in Texas.
Kari Hines with Texas A&M Forest Service says the agency has nearly 340 full time wild land firefighters, so they were able to fulfill both calls for reinforcements.
One of the biggest challenges Texas firefighters could face when responding to fires in other states, is the difference in terrain, landscape and weather conditions.
"Now of course fire behaves differently in different ecosystems and that's something that we don't even need to leave the state to experience, right?", Hines said.
"The fires of the piney woods around East Texas are vastly different from the large plains fires of the panhandle in West Texas — it's something that we get to experience in state and it's something that we value and one of the reasons we're sending people out of state, is to just bolster their own capabilities and knowledge."
But the technique and communications between local, state, and federal resources are all the same.
"No matter where you go and no matter who you're speaking to, whether it's local, regional, state, or national resources, we're all using the same language," Hines said.
"The classes that wildland firefighters take whether it's your basic introduction to wildland fire, whether it's the upper-level leadership classes — those are all national based courses and we are expected to all be speaking the same language."
But while resources are being sent out, it could hurt other neighborhoods.
In Marlin, because resources are being sent to other places, the city took to Facebook to inform residents that response times could be prolonged for fire suppression aircraft, dozers and additional personnel.
Out-of-state deployments are voluntary for Texas A&M Forest Service crews — there are also hundreds of structural firefighters who work for municipal departments that are trained on wildland fire and are available through the Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System – or ‘TIFMAS’.
