Four student firefighters from the Blackwell Job Corps Center near Laona are on their way to Oregon as part of a Wisconsin interagency firefighting crew.
The U.S. Forest Service oversees the Job Corps Center in Forest county. Forest Service spokesperson Hilary Markin says the crew left Wisconsin Monday traveling to Redmond, Oregon, where they will get their assignment....
"....the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and the Forest Service as an agency started a wild land firefighter training program at Blackwell back in 2014. Since then we've been certifying wild land firefighters and then they've gone on to do some cool stuff...."
...that includes helping the national forest with fire staffing needs, and suppression of wildfires and participating in fuels reduction projects and prescribed burns on the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan.
Since then, 18 have been certified as Wild land Firefighters and 60 are participants in the program working towards their certification.
The 20 person interagency crew fighting the western fires also include employees from the DNR, National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs.
