Wildland fire managers from the United States are in Australia to help with devastating wildfires burning there, and a manager from Eugene just got back after a month.
Edward Hiatt just got back home on Saturday, and Tuesday he talked with us about his experience.
"The scale of these fires I've never seen anything that size,” Hiatt said.
Hiatt, a 31-year fire veteran, left for Australia on December 5 with sixteen other U.S. wildland fire managers, spending 35 days overseas.
"The first group to go went to work as part of their incident management team, as either an aviation officer air attack planning or operations,” Hiatt said.
Hiatt was there as a planning officer
"Basically looks at where the fire is going by using the weather forecast, fire weather predictions from our fire behavior analysts."
From there Hiatt says orders go in for resources such as fire engines and aircraft to battle the massive blaze.