PHOTOS: In preparation for the upcoming fire season, the Cal Fire Humboldt and Del Norte units hosted their 17th annual Redwood Coast Fire Preparedness Exercises. Six California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation crews and two California Conservation Corps crews participated in the exercises during the program. All crews assembled at Eel River Conservation Camp in southern Humboldt County.
The three-day exercises evaluate fire crews’ physical conditioning, firefighting knowledge, fire safety, response vehicle condition, and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
“During these exercises, we have hand crews firefighting hand crews from Humboldt, Del Norte, and Mendocino counties who assemble for readiness drills, which include of a lot of different aspects of firefighting for these hand crews, it includes base camp operations, line cutting operations, and safety,” said Cal Fire public information officer Jeremy Ward.
During the exercises, fire crews were evaluated on their ability to answer questions based on tools and knowledge. As a Fire engineer at Cal Fire, Ivan Driggs describes some of the questions asked during the exercises.
“Chiefs ask the fire crews certain questions, such as common decimeters on fires, their ten standard fire orders, 18 situations stop, watch out what they carry in their gear, what their chainsaws can do, how much the dome wash can handle,” said Driggs.
