By Alan Devall
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A contingent of 72 Mexican firefighters received a briefing from U.S. fire officials on Monday alongside their American counterparts before heading out to help fight the wildfires plaguing Southern California.
The group is made up of military specialists, including doctors, engineers and search and rescue personnel, as well as a group of firefighters from Mexico’s equivalent of the U.S. Forest Service.
The major wildfires that have been raging in the Los Angeles area since Tuesday have claimed the lives of at least two dozen people and burned an area the size of Washington, D.C. More than 90,000 residents have been forced to flee their homes and entire neighborhoods have been incinerated.
The Mexican team will join firefighters from seven states and Canada to try to bring the inferno under control.
“They are now assigned to the fire where they’re going to be engaging on the fire line, basically working as a hand crew,” said Edwin Zuniga, public information officer for Cal Fire. “So building a containment line, reinforcement containment line, engaging on the fire directly if need so.”
The Mexican firefighters’ deployment duration is uncertain, according to Zuniga. It could be a week or three weeks.
“We have a special team so we are here to help, to bring people help, to give the best for them we can,” said firefighter Ivan Lorenzo Garcia of the Mexican Army’s Emergency Response Battalion.
Laura Velazquez Alzua, the National Coordinator of Civil Protection for Mexico, spoke about the importance of the international cooperation.
“We have the instruction of the President of Mexico, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, to come and help and contribute with the experience and knowledge of 72 specialists in firefighting,” she said.
Velazquez Alzua called it a “very important” moment for the firefighters.
“We are sure that Mexico is a supportive people, a people that reinforces its brotherhood with the people of the United States,” she said.
(Additional reporting by Liliana Salgado; Editing by Mary Milliken and Sandra Maler)
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