Several members of South King Fire shared their experience fighting the Los Angeles wildfires while being honored at the Federal Way City Council meeting on Feb. 18.

Four members of South King Fire took a reserve engine and spent 18 days away from Federal Way fighting fires in Los Angeles in January.

“On behalf of the entire community of the over 101,000 souls who call Federal Way home … you have our deepest gratitude and respect and thanks for the sacrifice you made, not only that you do every day … to race toward danger where others race away, but to literally drive down there help out our neighbors,” Mayor Jim Ferrell said.

The South King Fire team was part of one of 11 strike teams from Washington that assisted, according to Lt. Greg Willett, who spoke at the council meeting. Their team included five engines and a battalion chief. Engineer Dupras, Engineer Morris and Firefighter Clark were the others from South King Fire to go down to provide aid.

They began their time in California by protecting homes in a canyon in the upper part of the Palisades, Willett said, describing how “the fire was coming over the hill that night and then by morning it dropped down into the canyon and really flared up.”

“We were assigned different areas every shift that we worked,” Willett said.

One of these tasks is called “mop up,” which involves making sure that all the hot spots are out.

“We were assigned different neighborhoods to basically triage the homes in different parts of Palisades. We had a lot of different types of tasks and jobs,” Willett said. “You just showed up and did whatever you were assigned and we were happy to do it.” In addition to protecting vulnerable homes and cleaning up these hot spots, they helped clear flammable brush that added danger in the low humidity environment.

In addition to the low humidity, extreme winds amplified the impact of the fires.

“I talked to an L.A. firefighter and he was there the night that it really went through the neighborhood and he said the winds were 75 to 100 mph, so when they tried to put the hose stream on the house it would just go sideways,” Willett said.

Ferrell asked Willett about misinformation that spread online about a lack of access to water during the fires.

“All I can tell you is the hydrants that we opened up had water … even the L.A. firefighters said the lack of water wasn’t the issue that we saw,” Willett said. “Maybe there was some area, clearly it’s such a big operation I can’t speak for the whole fire, but wherever we went we had water.”

Willett added that the water was “still limited because there’s only so many hydrants in a neighborhood,” and described the way some quick thinking from one of his team members helped with this issue, saying “we even were using garden hoses from the homes. A lot of people left those attached and one of these smart guys figured out to just put that hose into our hose tank and let it slowly fill it up to keep water in our tank.”

“It was probably the biggest fire most of us will ever be on,” Willett said. “It’s hard to describe. When we drove down Malibu … it’s just miles and miles of burned out homes and businesses.”

Lt. Greg Willett describes the experiences of the South King Fire firefighters who provided aid to fight the recent L.A. fires. Photo by Keelin Everly-Lang / the Mirror

Photos of the fires in Los Angeles in January, as seen on South King Fire’s Facebook page. Courtesy photos