ALBANY – Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that a crew of 20 employees and volunteers from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is traveling to the West Coast to assist in the containment of fires burning in Northern California and throughout the West.
DEC has an additional four state forest rangers working out west that left earlier this month.
The DEC employees and volunteers deployed will join crews from other states in flying to California, Washington and Oregon, where they will then be transported to a fire base camp. The wildfires are burning tens of thousands of acres with most started from lightning in late July. Many homes are threatened by the spread of any of these fires.
The New York team is expected to be active in fighting fires for two weeks. All personnel travel and administrative costs for the crew will be paid directly by the U.S. Forest Service or reimbursed to the state.
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