CHICO — Two Cal Fire-Butte County firefighters headed to Hawaii on Wednesday to report for duty in battling the aftermath of the terrible wildfire in Maui.
Fire captains Dustin Mattos and Jordan Weber were the two picked to go.
“Teams are going from all over the state,” said Cal Fire-Butte County Public Information Officer Rick Carhart. “Mattos and Weber are part of an incident management team. They are going with a team to support the efforts in Hawaii.”
The two men are part of a team called Incident Management Team One ordered by the state of Hawaii Emergency Management. They were requested.
“Whenever the team gets activated, they go as part of the team,” Carhart said. “Another incident management team was activated to report to Riverside County to support the families and the funerals of people killed in the helicopter crash there.”
Carhart said he didn’t know the exact roles Weber and Mattos are taking on, but there are a lot of administrative overhead positions, such as working at base camp or working in the office helping with planning or with operations.
The team consists of 67 members. They come from all over the state of California and could be part of Siskiyou County all the way to San Diego, Carhart said.
Carhart said he didn’t know for how long Mattos and Weber will be in Hawaii.
“They are just told to go and will stay until the job is done,” he said.
Mattos is a resource unit leader. Weber is a captain in the planning department. He and the others will come up with the operational component.
“Those are the guys who come up with the plan every day for what they will do,” said Carhart.
The resource unit leader works on logistics and figures out what resources are going where along with who is bringing food and supplies and what goes along with people out fighting the fire.
“Everyone is on the line doing the job and making sure everyone has the equipment and support they need,” Carhart said.
