Early this morning about 22 Firefighters from the Sacramento, Folsom, and Cosumnes Fire Departments responded to the Big Meadow Fire in Yosemite. They were sent out as Rainbow Strike Team #4158C.

So what is a “Rainbow Strike Team?” Heck, what is a Strike Team? I know many people do not understand much about what we do and much less about what it takes to battle a large fire, like the one in Yosemite, or what it takes to respond to a large disaster, such as a hurricane, earthquake, terrorist act, or flooding.

A Strike Team is typically a five piece team of Fire Engines or other types of fire apparatus. They respond and work together as a team. A Rainbow Strike Team is made up of different fire agencies. A regular Strike Team comes from one Fire Agency.

The Strike Team will respond and report to the incident. There they will be given an assignment, which could be anything from protecting structures to mopping up hot spots. They are usually assigned to a shift of 24 hours on, and 24 hours off. While they are working their 24 hour shift they will try their best to take an occasional nap, but sleep usually happens on their day off. And their 24 hours off, is most often not 24 hours! There is the drive time from their assignment to camp, there may be meetings and de-briefings to attend, equipment and supplies to replenish. It is a very hard and tiring job! In the Sacramento Fire Department, it is our policy to rotate fresh crews in after two weeks.

Another aspect of these large incidents is the “Overhead and Incident Management Teams”. These are the Firefighters and support staff that work behind the scene managing the incident. Logistics, Medical, Information, Liaison, Finance, Geographic’s (maps), Communications, Operations, Command, these are some of the positions that make up the Overhead and Incident Management Teams! In the Sacramento Fire Department we not only send Strike Team members but many Overhead people. We have Firefighters that are members of Incident Management Teams for the U.S. Forest Service as well as Cal Fire.

The incidents that I have responded to, as part of an Overhead Team have opened my eyes to how hard of a job it is to manage one of these large incidents. Literally, the Incident Management Team will move in and set up a small city! You can imagine how hard it would be to manage thousands of Firefighters and support staff! These Incident Management Teams do this, and they do it well! Sure there is always something that doesn’t go as planned, but they fix it and get on with the business of managing the incident. I always joke with my Cal Fire friends that they should be “wedding planners” on their days off. They are so organized!

So why do we send our Firefighters out to these fires? And how can the City of Sacramento afford to do this during these tight budget times? These are legitimate questions. The Fire Agencies in California are members of CALEMA (California Emergency Management Agency). We are part of this large agency that responds to large incidents, when the incident becomes too big for the local agency to handle on their own. In California, this happens a lot.

But here in Sacramento we do not have these types of large wildland fires, so why participate? Well the simple answer is; we have the distinct possibility to have large incidents in our region that would totally overwhelm our local resources. Floods and earthquakes are two very real scenarios. Last year there was a large wildland fire in Eastern Sacramento County that required the response of out of County resources. I believe this was the first time this ever occurred in our County. When something big happens here in Sacramento, and unfortunately it probably will, we will get the help we need from CALEMA.

What about the costs associated with sending our Firefighters out on these teams? Who pays the bills? The costs become the responsibility of the jurisdiction where the incident is. Typically the Sacramento Fire Department gets reimbursed by the State of California or the Federal Government; it just depends on whose emergency it is. Last year we sent resources to Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi during the Hurricane Ike. We were reimbursed by those States.

I have only scratched the surface of what happens at these large agencies. I haven’t even mentioned that there are many other different agencies, both public and private, that respond to these large scale incidents. There are a lot of people who are real busy during Fire Season. They are always ready and willing to respond anywhere, whenever they are needed!