One season-ending event is another season-starting crisis, as Montana wildland firefighters and incident commanders leave the West’s forests for East Coast storm duty.
“Sawyer teams are in high demand,” U.S. Forest Service spokesman Phil Salmon said of the communities devastated by Superstorm Sandy. “They need lots of chain saws out there, to cut through broken telephone poles, fallen trees and debris so emergency responders can get through.”
On Saturday morning, at least half a dozen crews will board jets bound for Harrisburg, Pa. Most of them will be deployed in New Jersey.
The teams include 20-person firefighting crews from the Blackfeet and Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, Helena National Forest, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and Idaho Panhandle National Forest, as well as an 11-person interagency incident command team. Another group of Forest Service buying teams left two days ago to start acquiring the fuel, food and other supplies needed by large camps of disaster assistance workers.
From The Missoulian: https://missoulian.com/news/local/montana-firefighters-incident-commanders-joining-superstorm-sandy-cleanup/article_d0be4de0-2561-11e2-8c33-0019bb2963f4.html