By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Fire Chief Steve Beer is proud of the firefighters he has sent to the wildfires out west all summer, but he's also glad for the funds their work brings back to the department.
"With the funding that we receive back, I'm trying to take our wildland program here locally and take it off the local taxpayers and fund it through the federal government," Beer said. "When we buy our new brush trucks and stuff like that, that's coming from reimbursement funds through the federal government instead of putting it on the MERF here locally and putting it on the local taxpayers. Everything is paid 100%, the overtime costs, the fill-in costs, the costs for the vehicle being out there. Everything is reimbursed at 100% rate."
The goal in the long term is to train more firefighters to rotate through on wildfires.
"To be deployed with a Type 6 engine that we have, it's like a pickup truck with some equipment on it, they have to have an engine boss," Beer said. "We have a few engine bosses right now in our department. Two of our engine bosses are some of our youngest employees on the job, with less than three years on the job, but they come to Hutch with a very unique skillset. They come from different hotshot groups. You might hear that term a lot in the wildland industry. These hotshot groups are the ones that go in and manage a lot of the fire areas. They are the elite of the elite in wildland firefighting."
The department had crews deployed through Pueblo, Colorado to fires out west from July 15 until just this past week.