Sonoma firefighters go to Southern California to fight wildfires

The Sonoma Valley Fire Department has sent seven firefighters and two fire engines to Southern California to fight more than a dozen fires that since Sunday have spread to thousands of acres from the eastern canyons of Los Angeles County to the shores of Malibu, destroying numerous homes and other structures.
The Sonoma firefighters joined with a total of about 80 firefighters and 22 engines sent to the southland from virtually every community in the county. Crews from other Bay Area fire departments as well as elsewhere throughout the western states, have been sent to battle the spreading conflagrations, considered among the worst in recent memory, in an area where autumn wildfires are common.
Sonoma Fire Chief Phillip Garcia said the two engines sent include a “brush rig,” built specifically to fight wild fires and an engine designed to battle structural fires.
“They left yesterday,” Garcia said in a telephone interview Monday. He said they drove their engines to the southland. Once there, they will be deployed to one of the fires.
“There is a good probability that they will be down there for four days or longer,” he said. As of late Monday none of the fires were even close to being contained. The major problem is the dry Santa Ana winds, with gusts up to 80 miles an hour, that are fanning the flames and propelling fiery embers, some the size of a quarter, to tinder-dry brush and scrub oaks that carpet the Malibu hills as well as those to the east that surround the San Fernando Valley.
Garcia said the engines and crews sent from Sonoma do not leave the Valley short of firefighters or firefighting equipment. The engines, he said, are part of the reserve that is put aside for times like these, virtually a yearly occurrence, when major wildfires break out elsewhere.
So if a fire should break out in Sonoma during the forecasted warm and unusually dry days ahead, Garcia said. “We are fully staffed.”