Firefighters from New Zealand, Australia and Canada may be joining the battle against wildfires burning across California

by Criticom | July 9, 2008 at 04:46 pm

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Australia and New Zealand are a really good fit because their firefighters are trained to roughly the same standards and use an incident command system that parallels ours,'' Smurthwaite said. ``Plus it is the dead of winter in Australia and New Zealand, so there is no pressing need for them to stay at home.

U.S. officials are negotiating with fire services in the three countries to reinforce state and federal firefighters now engaged in battling blazes that have consumed more than 675,631 acres (273,418 hectares) of forests and grasslands in California, said Don Smurthwaite, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.