A team of five brave men with the Mississippi Forestry Commission is headed to Oklahoma to help battle a fire that’s consumed over 570 square miles of land.
“It would be, you know, Rankin County on fire. Not just 100 acres on fire, but the whole county,” said Mississippi Forestry Commission Fire Chief Randy Giachelli. “Can you imagine evacuating Rankin County? Because I can’t.”
The inferno has ravaged the state of Oklahoma with historic conditions fed by 50 mile per hour winds and a relative humidity in the teens.
The Strike Team will be assisting with the Rhea wildfire, the largest in the area. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Rhea wildfire had burned approximately 245 thousand acres of land, of which Oklahoma firefighters have only managed to contain about 3 percent. The Forestry Commission actually already sent a strike team of eight last month, and still has a few people in Oklahoma.
Ben Vanderford was a part of a strike team in Oklahoma last year. “We’re all kind of in one big fire family, and with this Southern Compact, we just go to help whatever states are in need,” said Vanderford. “They would do the same for us.”
From MS News Now: https://www.msnewsnow.com/story/37977325/ms-forestry-commission-sends-five-member-strike-force-to-fight-okla-fires