A group of local firefighters returned home Saturday after weeks spent battling wildfires in Montana.
Five members of the Connecticut Fire Crew, who have special training and certification to fight forest and wildfires, left for their 14-day tour on August 15.
Allan Waterman of Moosup, Jacob Light of Enfield, Robert Yost of Milford, Deven Yudelsen of Burlington, and Patrick Marcoux of Sturbridge, MA, joined a company of fifteen others from the northeast.
The crew’s first seven days were spent in Montana’s northwest corner near Ennis, where they battled the Wigwam Fire until it was mostly contained. They then moved hundreds of miles south to Libby, MT, primarily focusing on protecting the town from the Gold Hill Fire, which remained one-percent contained when they left for Connecticut on Saturday.
The two fires are burning through approximately 7,600 acres, according to a release from DEEP, and the sight of the destruction is seared into Robert Yost’s memory. “When you’re standing in a forest that’s burned, that’s decimated all around you, it’s mind-boggling,” he said.
Yost, a firefighter with the Westport Fire Department, used his paramedic training to handle minor injuries sustained by the group as they hiked for miles each day with 40-pounds of supplies on their backs.
The work was hard, but leaving Montana knowing his crew helped secure the town from the fire raging just 13 miles to the north feels good.
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“It’s probably the hardest work you’ll ever do, yet the most fun you’ll ever have,” he said.
Firefighters with similar training have been dispatched nationwide through the Forest Service’s reciprocal aid program to battle the wildfires that claimed more than 6.8 million acres so far this year. DEEP sent a fire engine and a three-person crew to California earlier in the week to the Ferguson Fire in Yosemite National Park, where almost 97,000 acres are burning. The fire already claimed the lives of two firefighters.
