Mutual Aid Brings Relief to Rey Fire Crews

The Rey Fire growth and behavior demands mutual aid from federal fire agencies.

National Incident Management Team One will take command of the fire on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m.

“What our team is going to do out here is focusing on is not only trying to catch where the fire is now, but we’re also looking at worst case scenarios out in this country here for opportunities to build contingency lines,” said Richard Hadley, the public information officer for National Incident Management Team One.

The Rey Fire started out as a small vegetation fire which quickly burned over 29,000 acres after 5 days. Santa Barbara County Fire requested help from neighboring agencies and state entities.

Before Team One takes command, they will shadow Team Two who has been on the fire’s front lines since the second day of the burning.

“What the shadowing does is gives the other team the opportunity to see how we’ve been doing things, we can give them all the access codes and give them a tour of the fire, so when we transition out, they can kind of take off where we left off, so we don’t have that gap of lack of information to the public and to the community on a major fire like this,” said Royjindar Singh, public information officer for South Central Sierra Interagency.

Fire and emergency officials held a press conference at the vista point on San Marcos Pass on Tuesday afternoon. It was a formal introduction to the arrival of National Incident Management Team One. They also discussed the importance of mutual aid and keeping the fire from spreading to communities.