Newport Beach, Orange County Firefighters Lend Mutual Aid In Central CAs Windy Fire Battle

NEWPORT BEACH, CA —A Newport Beach Fire Department battalion chief will spend another week leading a strike team fighting central California's Windy fire and protecting giant sequoias and the small communities that surround them.

Chief Brian McDonough has already spent one week deployed as strike team leader for a group of five engines, the Newport Beach Fire Department reported this week. He is training a batallion chief from the city of Orange and is also leading firefighters from various other agencies around the county, the department said.

Overnight, McDonough and his crew worked to protect the community of Johnsondale from encroaching flames. All of the structures in the town were protected though they were under heavy fire conditions, Newport Beach Fire Department spokeswoman Natalie May told Patch.

"Chief McDonough is out there, mentoring and teaching another chief how to lead a strike team under extreme conditions," May said. Firefighters from the cities of Anaheim, Orange and Huntington Beach worked under his leadership. He is doing Newport Beach proud in one of the worst fire seasons in California's history, May said.

McDonough and his team are stationed in the sequoias, according to the department. As a team leader, McDonough has the job of protecting nearby structures, and a big part of that is helping to protect some of the oldest living things on the planet, the big trees of the giant sequoia forest.

Earlier in the week, firefighters went to great lengths to help save the oldest trees in the forest. Known as the Four Guardsmen, the trees survived after firefighters such as McDonough and his crew cleared out nearby vegetation and wrapped the base of the trees in fire-resistant material. The trees, which have survived wildfires in the past, remained safe, but there is still more to protect and more work to be done.

The Windy fire is just part of the massive KNP Complex fire burning in the central part of the state, located in the Giant Sequoia National Monument area of Sequoia National Forest and on the Tule River Indian Reservation.

Smoke from that blaze drifted into Orange County Thursday and Friday, a reminder of the firefighters still in action to our north.

As of late Thursday, the Windy fire had burned more than 49,000 acres and was only 6 percent contained. Multiple giant sequoia groves remained under threat by the fire, according to incident commanders at the scene.

Peyrone Grove, South Peyrone Grove, Red Hill Grove, Parker Peak Grove, Long Meadow Grove, the Trail of 100 Giants, Black Mountain Grove, North Cold Springs Grove, Belknap Camp Grove, Packsaddle Grove and Starvation Creek Grove are remained threatened.

Resources, including McDonough and his crew, continued to set backfires along control lines in an effort to protect the giant sequoias where feasible, and crews are securing the line behind the operation.

Lightning is thought to be the cause of the Windy fire, according to officials. It is burning through timber, brush and chaparral in steep, often inaccessible terrain in an area plagued by drought.