Crime & Safety

Three Day Wildfire Drill Provides Critical Training

—County News Center

To fight a fire, you need water.

But next time you’re out in San Diego’s County’s rural backcountry, keep your eyes peeled for fire hydrants. Or don’t. It would only be to demonstrate a point: Across many hundreds of thousands of acres, there aren’t any.

That’s why 19 County Fire Authority water tenders play an important role in wildfires here. This week, Fire Authority volunteer firefighters practiced transporting a voluminous water supply to a remote rural firefight in a three-day exercise that drew hundreds of local, state and federal firefighters to the Barona Reservation.
The annual wild land drill prepares agencies to work together during a complex and quickly evolving wildfire.

The need for such preparation became evident just hours after the drill wrapped up Thursday, when Fire Authority volunteers with 11 water tenders were called to work with CAL FIRE and other agencies on a brush fire in the Scissors Crossing area east of Julian.

“Absolutely, no doubt, this is critical training,” said Kevin O’Leary, the Fire Authority’s deputy fire services coordinator.

O’Leary works closely with the County’s volunteer fire companies, which cover about two dozen communities, sparsely-populated backcountry areas such as Shelter Valley, Warner Springs and Campo.

In one of the drill’s many scenarios, County volunteers and career firefighters from other agencies used water tenders to establish a “water point” for the Sheriff’s helicopter practicing water drops, and for engines and hose lines.

The water point is an ad-hoc reservoir and water source where no pond or lake is available. O’Leary said the volunteers at the exercise practiced establishing the water point quickly, then making a cycle of trips to the closest ample water supply—in this case Ramona and Lakeside—to refill the tenders, returning  to the water point to make deposits before doing it all over again.

O’Leary said the wild land drill consisted of a series of scenarios. Besides establishing a water supply, firefighters were presented with such challenges as protecting a home where downed power lines added to the danger and ascending and working on a steep and rugged hill, where they hauled and connected hundreds of yards of heavy hose.

All this involved firefighters from multiple jurisdictions who had probably never met each other.  Just like in a real regional wildfire.

“In the drill, the big part is mixing everybody up,” O’Leary said. “Everybody has to work together.”


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