Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest personnel are in southern California fighting wildfires. Two crews have been sent, a 26-man military veteran crew, and 13 more supporting response needs.

Mark Twain Fire Management Officer, Jim Cornelius, told Missourinet that it’s highly unusual to send fire resources in January.

“As the system gets busier and busier, that same concept, the closest resource, they’ll reach out to neighboring states and geographic areas,” he said. “So, it’s literally like how many firefighters are available compared to the request needed for the fire and they just started outreaching.”

The crew could be in southern California through at least the rest of the month.

“So, they could be cutting hand line, depending on what part of the fire they’re on. They could be working around structures, doing, you know, taking brush and fuels away from structures in advance of the fire,” Cornelius said. “They could be on parts of the fire that have already been stopped and putting it out. You stop the forward progress of the fire, then you have to actually put it out.

Over 50,000 acres have burned across southern California with over 16,000 structures destroyed.

“Either putting in line, reinforcing line, or doing structure defense preparation,” he said. “Any of those three things seem very possible right now. That literally, all three things, could happen on the same day. You’re typically just assigned to a geographic sector of the fire.”

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