Twelve firefighters from the Manteca Fire Department are now assigned to wildfires throughout Northern California.
They were deployed with one Office of Emergency Services green engine housed at the Powers Avenue station and another regular duty engine from Station One.
The four Manteca firefighters heading to the Mariposa County “Mission Fire” were Kenton Shipherd, Tony Taberna, Captain Kevin Terpsma and Gerry Garcia. 
Manteca Fire Chief Kyle Shipherd followed in the Manteca department’s  SUV not knowing how long they would be needed on the fire line.  The call for more resources came in from the Office of Emergency Services at 2 p.m. giving the team four hours to assembly the crew and ready their engine.
Battalion Chief David Marques said it is the first time he can remember that a team was made up of firefighters from more than one county.  Two engines came out of Sacramento, one from Stockton and Stanislaus County.
He noted that the term strike team was replaced by the task force for the team headed for the fire. 
Firefighter engineers, EMTs Derek Leong and Wes Chamberlain are still in the far north state where they have been assigned to rescue injured firefighters with their rope skills recovery techniques they use over on rough terrain when injured men have to be evacuated.
Captain Keith Scott and his team made up of Travis Gooch, Mike Hohn are in Fish Camp with strike team leader Bret Jones.

To contact Glenn Kahl, email gkahl@mantecabulletin.com.