Orem paramedics called to assist firefighters in Alaska’s Denali forest
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- Bryant Boehner, Austin McBride, Mike Hickman pose for a photo in the Denali camp. The three are sharing paramedic help for fire crews.
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- Orem paramedics prepare to fly to Alaska to help with fire crews.
Courtesy Orem city
Bryant Boehner, Austin McBride, Mike Hickman pose for a photo in the Denali camp. The three are sharing paramedic help for fire crews.
Three of Orem’s trained paramedics have been called to help in the Denali National Park and Reserve in Alaska. Their job is straightforward — taking medical care of the firefighters.
Bryant Boehner, Austin McBride, Mike Hickman have been improving their medical and firefighting abilities for more than five years in a new wilderness training program at the Orem Fire Department. While other teams have assisted on out of state fires, this is the first case of the Orem paramedics traveling via airplane.
While they were recently assisting on a fire in Nevada, their names were specifically called out to Denali, according to Shaun Hirst, Orem fire public information officer.
Denali has the tallest mountain in North America, and the Denali National Park that surrounds the peak includes more than 6 million acres of wilderness. Several areas are only accessible by horse or helicopter.
“They made a 30-hour turnaround from Nevada, came home and flew to Fairbanks,” Hirst said. “They had to be helicoptered in and are now on the fire line.”
Courtesy Orem city
Orem paramedics prepare to fly to Alaska to help with fire crews.
Hirst said the men will be camping with their medical equipment and taking care of fire crews for a minimum of 14 days and won’t return until Aug. 18 or 19 at the soonest. The Denali fire is a complex or series of storms started by lightning between the forest and Fairbanks.
“As fires combined there are over 50,000 acres burning as of Wednesday,” Hirst said. “There is an Air Force Base the fire is close to. They are boating firefighters to the fire line.”
According to Hirst, the Orem department is part of a cooperative agreement made between the department as a point of resources for other places in Utah and throughout other states in the country.
“These three have significant wildland experience,” Hirst said. “The bigger story is that we did not have trained or developed teams until recent years.”
Now, 10 of Orem’s firefighters and paramedics are highly trained and all of the department’s firefighters have received the basic training.
Boehner, McBride and Hickman, all married with families, will be ruffing it for the next little while before other members of the team will be deployed to some other fire. The state of Alaska will be the paying entity for the three paramedics as they serve the fire crews.
