The Defense Department now has 500 active-duty troops and a variety of equipment on standby to assist with the wildfires in California, said the deputy pentagon press secretary.
“As announced by the president, 500 active-duty personnel currently stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, are preparing to support requests from federal and state authorities with route clearance, commodity distribution, search and rescue, rotary wing, airlift and general support, as requested,” said Sabrina Singh during a briefing today.
Those 500 active-duty personnel are from the Marine Corps, she said.
March Air Reserve Base, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, is also now serving as a staging base for efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Singh also said that a defense coordinating officer and support element are being activated as well.
The department is also preparing some 10 Navy-provided helicopters with water delivery buckets to assist with aerial fire suppression, Singh said. Those Navy helicopters, along with aircrew, are coming from California’s Naval Station North Island, Marine Corps Air Station Camp Pendelton and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
“Under a long-standing memorandum of agreement with CAL FIRE, active-duty units in Naval Region Southwest are prepared to provide aircraft and aircrew to support the firefighting efforts,” Singh said. “These units are trained and annually certified by CAL FIRE to provide supplemental firefighting capability when requested by the state of California and approved by the [secretary of defense.]”
More than 800 National Guard personnel from California, Wyoming and Nevada are already on the ground or have been activated to provide assistance. The Guard is also operating 10 helicopters for firefighting and search and rescue operations.
“This number is expected to increase over the next 24 hours,” Singh said.
Additionally, eight Modular Aerial Fire Fighting Systems, or MAFFS-equipped C-130 aircraft are being activated under state authorities. The first two, Singh said, are expected to begin operations today, while the remaining six are expected to be ready by Sunday.
The firefighting operations in California are coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in concert with CAL FIRE and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. The Defense Department, Singh said, is a supporting agency to the effort.
“There’s so many different fires raging in California,” Singh said. “We have to work in coordination with the state and FEMA when it comes to how we address each single fire. And not just the fires; it’s the road clearing, it’s the management, it’s how people get back to their homes. All of this knits together very carefully and in an intricate way that is going to take a little time, it’s going to take some coordinating.”
Singh said DOD resources work best when there is a plan in place to make sure they are used the most efficiently.
“You just don’t want to surge a bunch of capability and resources into a region without a full plan,” she said. “So that’s what we’re doing, and we’re working very closely with the state to make sure that we’re getting their needs met.”
