When Mike Richardson first heard about the fires raging in Los Angeles, he felt the immediate desire to help. Richardson has been a firefighter with the Oakland Fire Department for nine years. Not long after the call for assistance came, on January 7, he was on the road with several of his colleagues, making a midnight trip to Southern California in a fire engine designated for these kinds of missions. He has been in Los Angeles ever since, along with 18 other firefighters from Oakland, and expects to return middle of next week.
Speaking with The Oaklandside’s Callie Rhoades on Wednesday during some precious downtime, Richardson shared his experience of fighting the wildfires and his concerns about what might be in store back here at home, where the city is weighing whether to brown out four more fire stations to save money. The following interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
I learned about it like everyone else did. I was already at the firehouse, and I read about the wind events that they had predicted. My ears started to perk up a little bit more. I think I heard the first report of the Palisades Fire around 2 p.m., while at work. I knew I had a little bit of space in the schedule. I made a quick call to my wife back home and ran it by her: Are you okay if I take off on this, if we do go? At that point, we still didn’t know if we were going or not, but we assumed there was going to be an OES deployment, which is the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services…