Five experienced incident management specialists leave
for the United States of America tomorrow (Friday) as part
of a joint Australasian contingent supporting America’s
response to an intense wildfire season.
Fire and
Emergency New Zealand is deploying the team to Idaho under
longstanding agreements with the USA, Canada and Australia
to provide mutual assistance with wildfire
suppression.
Four members are Fire and Emergency
personnel and the fifth is from the forestry industry. They
will be embedded in local incident management teams to
perform senior roles: two will be managing helicopter
operations bases, one will be a heavy equipment boss and one
an operations branch director. The fifth will be in a
liaison role representing New Zealand.
Fire and
Emergency Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler says New
Zealand’s own fire management capability is enhanced by
international deployments. They provided an opportunity to
gain experience in complex, large-scale, long duration
vegetation fires of the kind not seen in New
Zealand.
“The team will bring back what they learn and
share their knowledge with colleagues here, and our own
response capability will benefit from it,” Megan Stiffler
says.
“And in return, our team will be sharing their
own extensive skills and experience – that cross-pollination
of knowledge is priceless.”
New Zealand regularly
deploys firefighters and incident management team members to
Australia and North America, drawing on personnel from Fire
and Emergency and partner agencies including the forestry
industry, Department of Conservation and New Zealand Defence
Force. This deployment will be the 71st supported by Fire
and Emergency and its predecessor organisations. The first
deployment to the USA was in 2000 under the auspices of the
National Rural Fire Authority.
The five team members
heading to Idaho come from Southland, Otago, Auckland and
Northland. They will be in the USA for five
weeks.
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