Navajo Nation firefighters battle fires in Los Angeles

Navajo Scouts firefighters and technicians from the Navajo Nation joined emergency efforts in California after fires that left 27 dead and thousands evacuated. From Altadena, they fight residual fires, restore roads and verify damage.

Navajo Nation firefighters worked tirelessly in a cloud of dust to remove dirt from a narrow path on the side of a landslide-affected mountain in Southern California, coughing and sneezing in the midst of the grueling work.

It was the Navajo Scouts' eighth straight day battling the Eaton Fire outside Los Angeles, and their Friday morning task was twofold: restore road access to the hill near Altadena and survey damage caused by the fire in the summit structures.

The team of 23 people had traveled for two days to southern California from the Navajo Scouts base in Fort Defiance, on the state border between Arizona and New Mexico, to join the extinction efforts. forest fires that have caused at least 27 deathsdestroyed more than 12,000 structures and forced more than 80,000 people to evacuate the area.

This is one of several fire crews from Native American tribes and the Bureau of Indian Affairs participating in the operation.

The Navajo Scouts “first response” team, which includes several elite hotshot-certified firefighters, has helped Los Angeles residents save mudslides and destroyed trees and has worked to extinguish residual fires.

“We all feel like we're giving back to the people,” said Brian Billie, emergency coordinator for Navajo Scouts. “Talking to residents, some have been here since childhood and have lost their homes.”

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren praised the team for “answering the call” to protect people in Los Angeles, including the Navajo diaspora in the area.

“Let us send them our sincere wishes for protection, so that they may return home safely,” he said of the Navajo Scouts in a post on the social platform X.

Eleven electrical technicians from the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority also traveled to Los Angeles to assist in response and recovery efforts because of their qualifications to work on both new construction and “hot” lines.

They are paying a debt of gratitude after utility workers from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power repeatedly traveled to the semi-autonomous Indian territory in recent years to train and help expand electric service to 170 Navajo homes, said Deenise Becenti, spokesperson for the Navajo Public Utility Company.

More than 10,400 families live without electricity across the Navajo Nation, which spans an area the size of West Virginia, a legacy of shortcomings in the country's rural electrification efforts in the 1930s.

Becenti said Navajo utility crews are used to spending time away from home to complete key construction projects on the vast reservation, but the deployment to Los Angeles is their first involvement in a major mutual aid project outside their territories. .

“It brings great pride, not only to our utility employees here, but to the people of the Navajo Nation… to send firefighters and utility workers to help an area that has been hit hard by a force of nature,” said Becenti, who pointed out that there are many Navajo people in Los Angeles.

“As far as we know, we are the only tribal service company that is sending crews.”