PORTLAND, Ore. — Firefighters from Oregon are heading to Australia to help fight the devastating wildfires.
The Bureau of Land Management in Oregon and Washington on Monday announced that four more firefighters are on their way. Firefighters from Vale, Prineville and Burns will assist 13 other Pacific Northwest firefighters in Australia.
They join nearly 100 experienced Americans who are helping fire crews there.
Tim Klukas is among them. He is a fire management analyst with the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center based out of Portland.
Klukas has been in Australia since Dec. 21, 2019, assisting in analysis of fire operations and the impact of weather conditions.
"It’s very extreme situation when those orange, cloud-like conditions occur and it can block out the sky," he said in a phone interview with KGW Tuesday.
Crews from the U.S. are not only helping fight the flames, they are giving Australia's volunteer firefighters a much needed break. Thousands have been working to combat these fires for more than a month with little rest.
"The personnel on the ground here have been at it for 45 days or better," Klukas said. "They are mostly volunteers and so what that means is they have had a severe impact to their livelihood because they’re no longer at their day jobs."
The assistance of outside firefighters allows Australian crews to take a day or two off. Klukas hopes their help will bring back a sense of normalcy for Australian firefighters and allow them to take a break.
However, some of the volunteers do not have a home to return to.
"In many cases, some of the volunteers have also lost some structures, some of them lost their homes, and certainly they need time to deal with that," Klukas said. "And then people also just need time to decompress get some relief from stress."
Fires that started burning in August have destroyed more than 12 million acres. Dozens of people and millions of animals have died. Thousands of people have been evacuated and at least 2,000 homes have been destroyed.
Fire conditions are extreme due to an extended drought and hot weather.
According to the BLM, this isn’t the first time the two countries have helped each other fight fires. In August 2018, 138 Australian and New Zealand firefighters traveled to the U.S. for nearly 30 days to fight wildfires in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
