During two weeks of battling massive forest fires in California, 10 Connecticut firefighters never escaped the smoke.
“We never saw the sun the while time we were out there. It was completely obscured,” said Rich Scalora, leader of the unit that arrived back in Connecticut on Saturday morning. “All day, every day. When you sleep in your tent, there’s smoke.”
The 10, all trained in combatting woodlands fires, helped preserve the 85,000-acre Hoopa Valley Reservation from one of the enormous wildfires that have been ravaging California. Federal authorities estimate 2 million acres have burned.
“The Red Salmon Complex fire when we left Tuesday was 110,000 acres - to put it in perspective, that’s one of the smaller fires in California,” Scalora said Saturday.