{"id":24065,"date":"2025-01-10T15:41:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T22:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-sends-firefighters-to-los-angeles\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:47:15","slug":"cortez-sends-firefighters-to-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-sends-firefighters-to-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez sends firefighters to Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Water
Water is dropped by helicopter on the Kenneth Fire in the West Hills section of Los Angeles on Thursday. (Ethan Swope\/The Associated Press)<\/span>dur-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Jan. 11, four wildland firefighters from the Cortez Fire Protection District will head to Los Angeles County, where fires have killed at least 10 people, forced tens of thousands to evacuate from their homes and burned more than 36,000 acres over four days.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll leave around 9 a.m. with Bayfield\u2019s Upper Pine River Fire Protection District.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been very dynamic scheduling,\u201d Cortez Fire Chief Roy Wilkinson said.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson said they got the call to go earlier this week, but took a few days to get a crew together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re excited to go, especially to a big fire like this,\u201d said Wilkinson. \u201cI think it\u2019s the adrenaline and the excitement of not knowing what they\u2019re getting into.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus, responding to such a big fire is good for training, he said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re responding as a strike task force, which is a group of firefighters responding to the same incident \u2013 in this case, the fires in L.A. \u2013 with a shared leader.<\/p>\n

Cortez is sending the four on a Type 3 truck, which Wilkinson described as being a bit smaller than a large engine. Bayfield will send their crew on the same kind of truck.<\/p>\n

Capt. Jeremy Kelly, from Bayfield\u2019s Upper Pine River Fire Protection District, said the truck will be manned with two firefighters \u2013 an \u201cexcited\u201d paramedic and a rookie \u2013 plus an engine boss who\u2019s deployed nationwide to fires all summer long.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor being a small, rural department, having the opportunity to go to California is a big deal,\u201d said Kelly. \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting thing. They\u2019ll be able to help out in a lot of different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Los Pinos Fire Protection District in Ignacio sent four of their Wildland firefighters the afternoon of Jan. 9 on a Type 3 firetruck, said Los Pinos Deputy Chief Jim Owens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting on the road today,\u201d Owens said.<\/p>\n

Cortez Chief Wilkinson said it\u2019s unclear how long they\u2019ll be gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually it\u2019s two weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it could be a month, it could be a week. It just depends.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the contingent from Southwest Colorado, 23 firefighters from the Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Wildland Fire Management<\/a> arrived Thursday in Los Angeles County to assist more than 1,603 assigned personnel who are fighting the Eaton Fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ignacio and Bayfield are going, too<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,350,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78382,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24065\/revisions\/78382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24065"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}