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Five of New Zealand’s experienced incident management specialists are all set to join efforts to battle wildfires in the USA, Fire and Emergency NZ (FENZ) confirms.
The Kiwi crew is leaving today (July 24) as part of a joint Australasian contingent heading for Idaho under agreements with the USA, Canada and Australia to provide mutual assistance with wildfire suppression.
New Zealand’s own fire management capability is enhanced by such international deployments. They provide experience in complex, large-scale, long duration vegetation fires not seen in New Zealand, FENZ deputy national commander, Megan Stiffler says.
“The team will bring back what they learn, share knowledge with colleagues here and our own response capability will benefit from it. In return, our team will be sharing their own extensive skills and experience – this cross-pollination of knowledge is priceless.”
The team members come from Southland, Otago, Auckland and Northland. They will be in the USA for five weeks.
Although not all members of the group are frontline firefighters, four are FENZ personnel and the fifth is from the forestry industry. Two will be managing helicopter operations bases, one will be a heavy equipment boss and another an operations branch director. The fifth will be in a liaison role.
Two will be managing helicopter operations bases, one will be a heavy equipment boss and another an operations branch director. The fifth will be in a liaison role.
New Zealand regularly deploys firefighters and incident management team members to Australia and North America, drawing on personnel from FENZ and partner agencies including the forestry industry, Department of Conservation and New Zealand Defence Force.
The first deployment to the USA was in 2000 under the auspices of the National Rural Fire Authority.
