Four local firefighters are in Nevada helping fight wildland fires as the state has struggled with hot and dry conditions.
Mark Pitcher, a captain with the Idaho Falls Fire Department, and three others from the department left Idaho Falls last week with a fire engine to spend two weeks in Nevada.
So far this week, Pitcher and his team have helped the local Bureau of Land Management fight fires in an area about 40 minutes north of Reno.
“We are members of a task force here. So the task force has different types of resources put together,” said Pitcher. “This one (BLM) station that we are at is probably responsible for 1,500 or 2,000 square miles of BLM property that we could be called to go to.”
He said there are other out-of-state firefighters, including some from Syracuse, Utah.
Pitcher and his team have helped with a number of fires already, such as the Lebo Springs Fire in the Pine Nut Mountains on Aug. 2.