As deputy fire chief for your district, one of my duties is to serve as operational area coordinator for fire and emergency services across our county. This entails planning for fire weather and other emergency and disaster situations among all county jurisdictions and, beyond our borders, with neighboring and distant jurisdictions, as well as with State fire resource providers.

The 2021 fire season, among the most challenging on record, made necessary an unprecedented amount of coordination to ensure availability of the right firefighting resources when and where they were needed. Given the statewide nature of this past fire season, we were often called on to plan for support to other counties and jurisdictions across the state.