Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Australian Prime Minister Rudd Honor U.S .
Incident: Australia 2009 Support Wildfire
Released: 4/3/2009
USDA NEWS RELEASE
United States Department of Agriculture ∙ Office of Communications ∙ Washington, DC ∙ www.usda.gov
Release No. 0072.09 - Contact: Nayyera Haq (202)720-4623 or Angela Harless (202)720-4623
AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK AND AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER RUDD HONOR U.S. WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/ s.7 0 A/7 0 1OB contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/03/0072.xml
WASHINGTON, March 26, 2009-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today welcomed Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) at an event in honor of the wildfire firefighters who were deployed last month to aid Australia during difficult wildfire season.
"We are thankful to have such a partnership with Australia and very proud that American firefighters were asked to assist across the globe in a time of need," said Vilsack.
Prime Minister Rudd thanked the US Government for its support in fighting the "Black Saturday" bush fires of February 2009 which destroyed 2029 homes and killed 210 people in the state of Victoria, Australia. At that time, President Obama and the Prime Minister Rudd discussed the status of the fires across Victoria, Australia and on February 9, 2009 finalized a request for U.S. assistance.
Seventy-three people provided assistance to Victoria, 38 from USDA Forest Service and 35 from the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Department of Defense also provided aerial transport from Travis Air Force Base to Victoria for approximately 50 tons of fire retardant. The deployed U.S. personnel included: three Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Teams, 11 Incident Management Team members, a 20-person Interagency Suppression Crew and three liaisons. Sixty personnel returned to the United States on March 15 and one 13 member BAER team will return on April 7.
The American and Australian firefighters have supported each other for almost 10 years. Since signing a 2001 agreement, Australia has provided wildfire assistance to the U.S. in 2002, 2003 and 2006 while the U.S. has provided assistance in 2003, 2007 and 2009. The USDA Forest Service also provides firefighting assistance and training to numerous other nations including Greece, Mexico and Indonesia.
U.S. government deployments are coordinated through the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). NIFC, located in Boise, Idaho, is the nation's support center for wildland firefighting. Eight different agencies and organizations are part of NIFC. Decisions are made using the interagency cooperation concept because NIFC has no single director or manager. More information about USDA is available at http://www.usda.gov/ and NIFC at http://www.nifc.gov/ .
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