LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Two strike teams of local firefighters answered the call for help in fighting the L.A. wildfires. They came back home Thursday night and talked about their experiences there.
Two firefighters tell FOX5 they’ve never seen anything like what they saw when helping fight the Eaton Fire in the Pasadena area, Captain Travis Grove with the Clark County Fire Department says there’s a big difference between watching it on TV and being there on the ground.
“Seeing pictures is different, you know? I’m gonna go home and show pictures to my family and my crew back at Station 20,” Grove said.
Captain Grove was part of a 21-person team that had been in Altadena since January 9th to provide support and resources.
His Clark County colleague, Captain Jasmine Ghazinour explains what was different across state lines.
“Usually in this area, our fires aren’t super devastating in the fact that we don’t wipe out half of our town,” Ghazinour said. “We are usually there and most of the time keep the fire to one building, and this was just blocks and blocks of buildings that have burned. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
Only FOX5 was there to catch the second strike team of 24 members coming home after they were sent to the Palisades Fire.
Aside from fighting active fires, the strike teams protected nearby unburned homes, putting out spot fires caused by embers blowing in the high winds. But many homes, as we know, have been reduced to rubble.
Captain Ghazinour tells me she feels their pain.
“We work in a career where we do sometimes see very sad things. It’s tough to be around people. The entire area of Pasadena and Altadena was full of people who lost their houses, their food, their way of living,” Ghazinour said.
That was the most difficult part for Captain Grove, as his team had the tough job of taking people back to their property and helping the owners sift through the area that used to be their home to find any remaining valuables in the ash and rubble.
“There was nothing left in these homes, so we would catch people going in the rubble in the debris, and there’s nothing left in their house,” Grove said. “All they would want is there a plant in the back of their house that was their mother’s and that’s all there was left.”
The strike teams were made up of members from the Clark County Fire Department, Las Vegas Fire and Rescue and the Henderson Fire Department.
Copyright 2025 KVVU. All rights reserved.
