The day after the Los Angeles fires began burning, the Roseville Fire Department sent one strike team leader and one engine as a part of a five-engine team from Placer County; they arrived in the face of what would become one of the most destructive fires in California’s history.

With winds blowing near 90 mph, the two most destructive fires, the Eaton and the Pacific Palisades fire, devastated the Los Angeles area, with some estimates placing the dollar loss around $250 billion. The recovery effort is expected to last upwards of a year and a half. 

“The dollar loss alone is unprecedented,” Jamie Pepin, Division Chief for Roseville Fire, said. “The way that the fire behaved where they had up to 90 mph winds driving this thing from the mountains down to the ocean, that doesn’t happen but every 50 years or so.”

Nearly a month after the fires came to full containment, members of the strike team reflected on what they witnessed.

“Every one of us that were down there, we all said the same thing—none of us have ever seen anything like this. Yes, there’ve been big fires…but to be down there and see the amount of devastation and the amount of structures burned in any one location was pretty surreal,” Pepin said.

The fire would burn for nearly a day when the Roseville team arrived, with one primary assignment: hold the line against the fire in the Pacific Palisades.

Rex Tucker, Battalion Chief at the Roseville Fire Department, was originally sent down to the Palisades as a strike team leader. The Incident Command System (ICS) connects Roseville Fire with departments across California, the U.S. and North America; it is through the ICS that Pepin fought alongside firefighters from Canada and Mexico.

“[The ICS] originated here in California. Now it’s used nationwide for every type of event out there, whether it’s a wildfire, flood, hurricane, earthquake,” Tucker said.

The ICS does not come free of cost, as local departments go through bureaucratic procedures of reimbursement to ensure all other departments are compensated for their assistance. In California, reimbursement occurs through the California Fire Assistance Agreement, a process by which local governments are given financial support from the state to reimburse deployed departments.

“If we had a large incident that was requiring us to have mutual aid resources, where we’re going to have to reimburse them for their time, their equipment, to come here that could very easily and very quickly bankrupt a city,” Tucker said. “There’s no jurisdiction out there that has enough funds in reserve to be able to address that type of thing. And that’s where the federal funding comes in. Very, very important to help out with that.”

 In a highly politicized disaster, negotiations between the Trump administration and California officials continue following Gov. Newsom’s request for $40 billion in federal aid on Feb. 21st. The same day, special envoy Richard Grenell said the White house is determining the conditions attached to the aid package. 

While the Los Angeles Fire Department is the second largest fire department in the United States, the extremity of the fire called for a renewed sense of urgency and community to contain the fire.

“Every person I interacted with went out of their way to thank us for coming down and helping out and that’s something that’s often said, like any fire you would go to, that’s not atypical. But, to me, there was a genuineness to it. They really were overwhelmed,” Tucker said.

The Roseville Fire team noted that the community had its own ways of giving back to the forces that constantly protect them.

“They really went out of their way to make us feel welcome and appreciated … Everywhere we went, there were food trucks. They had the In-and-Out semi truck I’ve never seen in person. Guy Fieri, the famous chef, had a barbecue trailer down there,” Tucker said. “There were always volunteers running food out to the line as close as they could get without going into the restricted areas.”

Roseville Fire considers itself a “customer service department,” pursuing the well-being and prosperity of the community as a whole more than solely putting out fires. The team recalls the “mop up” stage following the fire, in which first responders worked to make contact with families in the area. 

Pepin describes an instance in the aftermath of the fires, bringing resources to a family who had not evacuated, who had wildlife on their property. 

“We brought them food. We brought them water for their dogs and sheep and one of the crews went and got feed for the sheep, that kind of thing. So we do try to go above and beyond to help those folks.”