As part of a month long training, 13 local fire agencies have come here to Lost Lake Park to get their hands dirty.
It's a collaborative effort between the Fresno, Clovis and Fresno county fire departments. All working to dust off the cobwebs after a long winter.
"The tactics involved with structural firefighting are completely different than the tactics involved with wild land firefighting," said Fresno Fire Department Training Ofc. Brian Price.
Which means they need to practice different techniques. Like mapping out how they'd attack a wild land fire working together to lay out hose and deploying safety shelters.
"Two firefighters from the Sierra hot shots have come down and they're delivering the Yarnell Hills after action report and discussing that tragedy and the lessons learned there," said Price.
The hot shots firefighters specialize in wild land firefighting. Safety in the field is a key component during this training.
"We also deal with structure environment in the wild land environment. so coming together and doing this cross-training together is building a cohesiveness amongst us and we're able to feed off of each other's information and intelligence," said Sierra Hot Shots Squad Leader Brian Grossman.
We're really trying to minimize damage so it's a different approach. You need to step back and look much more big picture in a wild land environment as opposed to a structure fire it's usually in a contained box.
Typically fire season lasts from May to October but with a dry winter things are already heating up. A task that these local firefighters are ready for.
