129th Rescue Wing Helps Fight Forest Fire in Butte County

The men and women of the California Air National Guard 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Field have been quite busy trying to save homes, lives and wildlife these last couple of weeks.

Working out of Chico, in the second week of operations in Northern California, two HH-60G Pave Hawks and aircrews have dropped more than 30,000 gallons of water on the Mill Fire in Butte County, according to the 129th's Facebook page. As of Monday, the fire had burned 1,610 acres and was 35 perecent contained said their status update.

So far more than 210,000 acres of the state have burned. According to the National Interagency Coordination Center, California has 13 fires burning through the state with varying levels of containment as of Aug. 16.

The California National Guard, including the 129th, have joined forces with the California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) to assist in efforts to extinguish the fires.

CNG helicopter crews have flown nearly 213 hours and conducted more than 531 water bucket missions, dropping an estimated 265,000 gallons, or 2.2 million pounds, of water across the state since being activated Aug. 7, according to CNG spokeswoman Jessica Green.