Two employees from the Cal FIRE San Luis Obispo Unit are back on the Central Coast after helping out in Maui following the August fires.
Nearly 100 lives have been lost due to the massive wildfire that occurred in Lahaina in early August.
On August 15, CAL FIRE San Luis Obispo announced that two first responders were flying to Maui to help out following the fires.
Battalion Chief Luis Ermigarat and Communication Operator Cassandra Lucke were part of Incident Management Team 1 and said they felt ready for what they were facing.
“Once we got there, we expected similar events we’ve worked through in California,” said Louis Ermigarat, CAL FIRE SLO battalion chief.
They were there to provide insight on how to tackle the wildfires and spent 28 days working with other agencies like the Maui Police Department, Maui County Fire, and the Maui Emergency Operations Center.
“It wasn’t that we were there to run their incident,” said Cassandra Lucke, CAL FIRE SLO Communication Operator. “We were there to mentor them since we had the experience and they didn't necessarily have the level of experience, so it was more of a mentoring and helping them get on the right path.”
Aside from working close to 18-hour shifts after their arrival, Llucke says they were required to be on-call 24 hours a day.
“The training. We did a cultural training, which I think was really big for us cause our culture is so totally different but we learned about their culture and their slang and so if someone said something to you and I think the biggest part of that is that they are so giving,” said Lucke. “They’ll give you their last meal to thank you and if you don't take it, it's almost like an insult for them.”
Ermigarat has been working for the agency for 25 years and says he understands how the people in Lahaina felt after losing so much.
“We’ve gone through these and experienced these in California. Working for CAL FIRE we get that experience, so going over there to assist those citizens and assist the county workers and assist the state workers, going through the process, we understand how they’re feeling,” said Ermigarat.
Lucke says that many of the first responders spent nearly 18 to 24 hours a day assisting with the fire or spending time at the Maui Emergency Operations Center and says they’ve built friendships with other first responders in Lahaina that will last a lifetime.
