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Cal Fire’s Incident Management Team 4 is heading to rural Okanogan County, Washington, on Thursday to help manage a wildfire as the state grapples with an “unprecedentedly high volume of fires this season,” according to the Washington Department of Natural Resources.
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Washington requested the team’s assistance under the Northwest Compact Agreement, a longstanding mutual aid pact that allows participating states and provinces to share personnel, equipment and other firefighting resources when local capabilities are exceeded, according to a Wednesday news release from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
The Sinlahekin Fire ignited from a lightning strike Sunday and grew to more than 8,500 acres within three days, according to the release.
Isabelle Hoygaard, a qualified expert with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, said there is nothing extraordinary about the Sinlahekin Fire itself. She said firefighters across the state have been stretched thin by the sheer number of wildfires burning this summer, prompting Washington to request California’s assistance.
Cal Fire’s incident management teams, with their embedded meteorologists and cutting-edge technology, bring more “expertise and sophistication” than Washington’s local teams have, Hoygaard said.
The California team is expected to shadow local firefighters Friday before taking command Saturday morning, Hoygaard said. Okanogan County’s northern boundary is the Canadian border. The Sinlahekin Fire is in central Okanogan County.
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“Wildfires do not recognize boundaries, nor does our shared commitment to helping one another,” Cal Fire Director Joe Tyler said in the release. “Our Incident Management Teams are among the most experienced in the world, and we are proud to support our partners in Washington as they work to protect lives, communities, and natural resources.”
According to Newsom’s office, the deployment marks the first time a Cal Fire incident management team has been mobilized to Washington under the Northwest Compact Agreement. California has sent firefighting resources to Colorado and Oregon this year and is providing technical assistance and training to French emergency officials responding to wildfires.
Since 2020, Cal Fire’s incident management teams have been activated 65 times.
California will continue to provide mutual aid to other states as climate-driven wildfires grow larger and more destructive, while “federal disaster leadership and long‑term recovery support have not kept pace with the scale of the crisis,” according to the press release.
“California isn’t sitting on the sidelines,” Newsom said in the release. “We’ve built the technology, the staffing, and the capacity not just to fight our own fires, but to send help when our neighbors are in trouble.”
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