SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A battalion chief with the Sacramento Fire Department is among the 17 Californians Gov. Newsom deployed to help with recovery efforts in Maui.
This is after multiple wildfires broke out on the Hawaiian island, killing at least 67 people and practically decimating the historic town of Lāhainā.
"It's very impactful for our agency to be able to send people out the door to help,” said Sacramento Fire Department spokesperson Captain Justin Sylvia.
His colleague, Battalion Chief John Irvine, was deployed to Maui this week and is helping with communications.
"He gets briefed on what's going on, what's the current situation like, and then he brings that information out to the community," said Sylvia. “He also listens to the feedback from the community. Maybe it's, 'My grandmother's still lost. We can't find her. She might be stuck in a house...' He takes notes and he brings that back to the management team and then they set up a plan to go out there and have some type of search for any type of victims."
He said Irvine’s deployment could last up to three weeks and then could be extended by a FEMA request.
Within the continental U.S., FEMA has 28 Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces. Eight of them are in California.
Of the 17 people deployed to Maui by Gov. Newsom and the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), 11 are from task forces in Sacramento, Riverside and Oakland. The remaining six are Cal OES personnel “specializing in urban search and rescue, mass fatality management, wildfire debris removal, hazardous waste, and other recovery areas.”
Irvine is part of Urban Search and Rescue California Task Force 7, based out of Sacramento and made up of members from many local fire departments, including Sacramento, Folsom, Roseville, West Sacramento and Sac Metro, among others.
"Our task force is probably one of the best in the nation, just because of the amount of training that they do and the dedication of our own members to the task force,” said Sylvia.
Sacramento's Task Force has deployed to disasters like the Twin Towers site — Ground Zero — in the wake of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
"Hurricanes, mudslides, tornadoes — any type of large-scale disaster where that local government can't handle that problem on their own and it becomes a federal issue. Then that's when our team gets sent out,” said Sylvia.
The work can include sifting through the ashes of homes and other buildings, searching for human remains.
“That's why we have our K9s, that can go out and assist in those searches,” said Sylvia. “But every structure will need to be assessed — not only for people but what kind of damage is done, and if it's still on fire — what the needs are."
So far with this disaster, Irvine is the only member of Sacramento's task force that has been sent to Maui, since the team out there needed help with communications - and that's Irvine's specialty.
But others are ready at a moment's notice.
"It means a lot to us that we can actually send a member out or an entire team out and assist elsewhere, where these people are just going through devastation,” said Sylvia.
Already this year, California firefighters, disaster recovery experts and others have gone to Oregon, New Mexico and Montana to assist with disasters. Back in 2021, California task force members went to Surfside, Florida to assist in the search for survivors after the condominium collapse.
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