Firefighters preparing for wildfire season in Douglas County

Firefighters preparing for wildfire season in Douglas County

Firefighters in douglas county started hands on wildfire training today... after a lot of virtual training.

In tonight's fire watch: kezi 9 news reporter evita garza shows us how they're doing things a little differently this year... to make sure they're ready for what's to come.

Trt: 1:24 00:00 take lower as ash and smoke filled the air near reservoir hill in roseburg today& firefighters got a taste of what the rest of their summer will look like.

00:08 randy babbitt wee working toward training above and beyond the minimum standard.

That one of the goals out here?

This was the first of three wildfire training sessions for the roseburg fire department, douglas county fire district number two and the douglas forest protective association.

More than twenty firefighters were thrown into replicated wildfire situations.

00:28 kyle reed?wee giving them all the opportunity first hand to dig some lines, squirt some water and do good things?

They've had to do much of their training virtually this year, because of coronavirus..

But, roseburg battalion chief randy babbitt says hands-on experience is the only way a firefighter will learn how to handle themselves in the field.?i want our people to walk away with some real work experience but do it very safely?

00:52 evita:?fire officials say theye anticipating an extremely busy fire season this year.

That why they wanted to train all of these firefighters at the same time.

Even though they come from three different agencies, they want to make sure they can work together as one team??we need to get all of our firefighters together from all different agencies keen back on the wildland side of things.

It been a long winter?

Over the next week, more than 60 firefighters will be trained on reservoir hill.

The next sessions are scheduled for wednesday and friday.

In roseburgevita garza kezi 9 news.

Fireworks