DENVER (AP) -- With no major blazes to fight at home, 150 Colorado firefighters have been sent to Alaska to help battle large wildfires there.
The latest group, members of Steve Hart's type one incident command team, left Thursday from Denver, said Larry Helmerick, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, based in Lakewood. Members of four hotshot crews were sent earlier, he said.
``In a bad fire year in Colorado other states would come and give us their hotshot teams and engines,'' he said. Recent rains have dampened the fire threat in Colorado and have led officials to loosen restrictions on campfires and lawn watering.
The firefighters will be fighting two fires in Alaska.
One is burning on 225,000 thousand acres about 30 miles north of Fairbanks. The other is a complex of fires burning on 180,000 thousand acres and threatening Eagle Village in northeast Alaska just west of the Canada border.
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