EVERETT — Firefighters from Snohomish County are being peeled back from the wildfires in Eastern and Central Washington, though some remain on the front lines. In the worst fire season in state history, they have been joined by dispatchers and emergency management experts from here, too.
The hope is that the worst of the fire season has passed, said Eric Andrews, the Gold Bar fire chief who coordinates wildfire response from this part of the state. Still, high temperatures and winds predicted on the east side during the next couple of weeks could bring trouble.
“If those winds come back, we could be right back in the thick of it,” Andrews said.
Crews remain deployed from Gold Bar and Everett, Andrews said. Two teams of specially trained wildland firefighters known as “strike teams” were headed back home Friday.
Andrews estimates that 75 firefighters from Snohomish County have cycled through the wildfire teams over the mountains. Some stayed three days, others for weeks.
Local fire departments expect to be reimbursed for their wildfire costs from the state and federal governments, he said.
Travis Hots, the chief of the Getchell and Arlington Rural fire districts, just got home a few days ago.
The past three weeks were a blur of long hours and varying emotions and fire conditions, Hots said.
On Thursday, Arlington firefighters had helped protect buildings in the Okanogan County town of Nespelem, Arlington public safety director Bruce Stedman said. Arlington fire Capt. Cary Stuart remained there Friday morning with firefighters Anna Trenouth and Craig Monson. The three were expected to be released later in the day.
Lessons learned from the Oso mudslide are being put to use, said John Pennington, Snohomish County’s emergency management director. A commission that studied the slide response looked at ways to pool resources from around the state to respond to local emergencies.
Pennington has been deployed with his team at the fires in Okanogan County, providing support to emergency management leaders there.
Support also entails relieving beleaguered dispatch operators. Two teams of local 911 dispatchers went to Okanogan County in August. It was the first formal use of a new statewide emergency dispatch mobilization program, said Cory James, a supervisor at the NORCOM dispatch center in northeast King County. James helped coordinate that effort.
In the wildfire zone, 911 centers were overwhelmed, too, he said. One team of locals helped staff an emergency operations center there, taking calls from people asking whether to evacuate or where to shelter their pets, James said. Two people from SNOPAC, the dispatch center in Everett, and one from SNOCOM, the center in Mountlake Terrace, were part of the deployment.
One of the local dispatchers they worked with last month had lost her house to last year’s fires, said Lena Grubb, a SNOPAC supervisor. That same woman was again working this year, answering 911 calls related to fires. She was the kind of person they wanted to help, and their help was appreciated, Grubb said.
“It gave them a much needed reprieve and maybe a day off to spend with their families, too,” she said.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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