Fire damage is seen in Mill City, Ore., Saturday, Sept. 12, 2020. Diminishing winds and rising humidity helped firefighters battling deadly blazes in Oregon and California, but with dozens of people still missing, authorities in both states feared that the receding flames could reveal many more dead across the blackened landscape. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

With deadly wildfires raging across the West Coast, forcing the evacuation of thousands in Oregon and scorching more than 3 million acres in California, fire crews are exhausted — and members from local fire departments are headed to provide some relief.

Athens Fire and Rescue will be part of a Texas Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid System strike team deployed to California to assist with fighting wildfires.

The team is composed of fire engines and personnel from East Texas — Athens, Nacogdoches, Longview, Mount Pleasant, Paris and Powderly — who will join other teams across Texas to “form one large contingent of up to 50 engines,” Athens Fire and Rescue explained in a Facebook post.

“As firefighters, we take an oath to protect and serve,” said Chief Russell Marshall. “And we take this oath very seriously. This oath doesn’t state that we will only protect and serve the City of Athens. We are here to serve locally, regionally, intrastate and interstate.”

Athens Fire and Rescue members Brian Davis, lieutenant; Brock Bozeman, fire driver; and Eugene Lattis, firefighter, will comprise a team known as Athens Brush 2 as they head to aid in the fight. Chris Walker, engine boss captain of the Nacogdoches Fire Department, will join them.

Athens Brush 2 left Friday afternoon for Lubbock, where they will connect with the rest of the team to head west.

Their specific deployment in California has not yet been announced.

TIFMAS is coordinated by the Texas A&M Forest Service and is the framework through which fire and rescue agencies work together to provide support for incidents as diverse as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and wildfires, the post explained.

Local resources, including personnel and apparatus, deploy at the request of the state to provide assistance.

“We are part of the TIFMAS program because when a large-scale event occurs in Athens, like a tornado, we recognize immediately that the event is larger than our capabilities,” Marshall said. “The networking, education, exercises, responses and established relationships are paramount to having a successful outcome to a devastating event.”

Placing these resources within local departments creates a win-win relationship where the local departments benefit from better trained, better equipped, better experienced firefighters to save more lives, the post said.

“The experience and training our personnel receive while working alongside other fire departments is invaluable and makes our department better for it,” Marshall said. “Local events such as the 2011 wildfire season in northeast Texas, the Athens fertilizer plant of 2014, the floods of 2015, the Van tornado of 2015, the Canton tornado of 2017, and the Alto tornado of 2019 lend credence and demonstrate the importance of having well-trained firefighters to respond to events larger than your everyday incident.”

The state reimburses local governments 100% for participating in the TIFMAS program.