Santa Fe firefighters talk working on Los Angeles fires

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Santa Fe firefighters talk working on Los Angeles fires

Among the thousands of personnel and hundreds of fire engines in Los Angeles right now are a few familiar faces from New Mexico. 

SANTA FE, N.M. – Among the thousands of personnel and hundreds of fire engines in Los Angeles right now are a few familiar faces from New Mexico. 

Teams from five agencies across the state dropped their local duties to help fight the wildfires. KOB 4 spoke with a team leader from Santa Fe about their first couple of days on the fire lines.

“It’s nothing out of the norm that most of us have seen,” said Nathan Miller, the wildland superintendent for the Santa Fe Fire Department. 

Devastation doesn’t take long to sink in when you’ve seen it before. 

“These, what we’ll call, mega fires are becoming more and more common as the years come along, and it’s just we’re seeing a lot of that,” Miller said.

Miller is also New Mexico’s team leader on the ground in Los Angeles right now. 

“It’s a little bit different fuels, a little bit different environment. But unfortunately, it’s all wildland urban interface,” Miller said. 

Miller deployed with four others from Santa Fe. A crew from Albuquerque, Bernalillo, San Juan and Los Alamos counties also deployed late last week. 

Miller said they’re working alongside teams from Washington, Nevada and Texas. 

“We’re all here for the same common task, the same goal. So we all come with that mindset of that single job that needs to be completed,” Miller said.

We caught him at the incident command post in Malibu, stocking up for the next 24-hour shift.

“24-hour shifts are long shifts. [The] sooner you can get out there and relieve your counterpart to get them back home, to get them rested, means a lot to everybody,” Miller said. 

It’s a schedule they’ve been through before. 

“Most of my team and a lot of people that were actually out here were part of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fires, also South Fork and the Salt fires this year,” Miller said.

Watching the winds overtake neighborhoods gave him a disappointing dose of déjà vu. 

“It’s almost identical to the Hermit’s Peak, Calf Canyon fires, the devastation is, along with the South Fork fires,” Miller said. 

Miller remembers five teams of California firefighters helped with the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak Fire fight in 2022.

“It’s nice to be able to return that favor and come out here and help them out in their time of need,” Miller said. “A lot of them are just sitting there, thumbs up, giving us some fist bumps [with a] big old smile on our face and just saying, ‘Thank you,’” Miller said.