TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY 2001-2021
TO SYRACUSE AND BEYOND. Syracuse firefighters travel to fight wildfires and reflect on the 9/11 attack
BY HAILEY MINTON
Fire Chief Aaron Byington said they require all Syracuse firefighters to have the necessary training to fight wildfires. Antelope Island is under their protection, and firefighting in wild areas requires different tools and techniques than structure fires. Syracuse city has two brush trucks, and they have the capacity to go out and help other areas that need assistance when they get the call. Wildland season begins anywhere from May and lasts through October. This year, they hired two seasonal wildland firefighters who specialize in fighting those fires; they happen to be twin brothers. They go out on deployment with the full-time staff and respond to fires anywhere in the western United States. In early August, when I chatted with Chief Byington, there was a team in Kellogg, Idaho, fighting the Character Complex Fire. They send help when it is requested, and they only send it if it doesn’t strain the staffing levels in Syracuse. “Our first priority is here in Syracuse. Benefits come from increased revenues from sending our people out because we bill for that service.” Another benefit is the training they get in different 16 syracuseconnection.com | September 2021
environments. They bring back expertise to share with the rest of the Syracuse crew. “Up in Kellogg, they have some big timbers, and we don’t really have that along the Wasatch front until you get high up on the bench.” This year, they deployed to Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and they helped out with the Art Nord Fire up at Snow Basin on the 24th of July. That fire spread over about 50 acres, and all the firefighters assisting were able to contain it before it overtook any homes. There were burn marks 20 feet away from one residence. Fire departments have each other’s backs, and if someone needs assistance to fight a fire in a different city, other departments will come to help. “If the roles were reversed, and we had a major fire here in Syracuse, we could rely on them to come help us out.” Many brush trucks and additional firefighters are only a radio call away. The Northern Utah Interagency Fire Center is a kind of a dispatch for firefighters. They get a resource order, and they send out the request to the nearby departments. If the departments nearby don’t have the resources to fill it, the agency casts the net wider. Not long ago, Chief Byington was in Salt Lake, and he saw an ambulance
