Marines and sailors deployed over the weekend to the frontlines of multi-agency firefighting efforts on the Creek fire, which has consumed more than 122 square miles in central California.
The Marines and sailors assigned to 7th Engineer Support Battalion – about 250 personnel in all, including about a dozen Navy hospital corpsmen – will form as hand crews with strike teams, each led by a wildland firefighter, for a deployment of unknown length. They will join more than 3,100 personnel fighting the Creek fire, which sparked Sept. 4 and has scorched 278,368 acres of mostly forested land. The fire was only 27-percent contained as of Monday morning, according to fire officials.
The deployment is the latest assignment of West Coast-based I Marine Expeditionary Force units to assist federal and state firefighters battling dozens of blazes that were burning across California and the West.