Firefighters keeping busy with area wildfires

BONNEVILLE COUNTY, Idaho (KIFI) - In an already difficult fire season, Bonneville County Fire District members are now helping out at the Moose Fire.

But that's not unusual for the BCFD. They've spent the last 12 weeks fighting fires non-stop across the western United States.

"This year, where the wildlife season's a little extreme, there's a lot of fires all over. And right now we're still early into the fire season," Captain Jon Molbert said. "But they request for the assistance because we have specialized trucks or tenders to enable them to actually do the firefighting on those fires."

One of their main efforts was in a pre-strike team on the Wildcat Fire in Nevada.

Fireman Braxton Combe was assigned to that fire. He says it's essential to help out the brotherhood.

"It's good to keep in mind that it's all one brotherhood, and it's also awesome just to get our department name out there and meet other guys. A young firefighter like myself is eager to get out there and help out," Combe said. "I got to meet other young firefighters and experienced firefighters. So you gain that knowledge and experience and you take it home with you and it just makes you a better firefighter all around."

The Bonneville County Fire dDistrict now has two trucks in Salmon helping fight the Moose Fire, and as the school year starts, they may need to send out more crews.

"A lot of the BLM and the Forest Service firefighters are actually younger kids. They're college students. And so when it's time for them to go back to school, they have to leave their fire jobs or the fires are on to go back to college," Capt. Molbert said. "In turn, it really shorts staffs the fires and makes it a lot harder to accomplish big strides in extinguishment. And so by sending trucks there, we're able to mitigate and try to keep that flow of the suppression going on those fires."

But they want to assure everyone back home there are still enough firefighters to keep their area covered.

"We're never going to short the city or our citizens to send trucks out. But we're able to keep trucks out for almost the entire summer, the entire fire season, every year with our staffing and to make sure that we're always covered," Capt. Molbert said.