The experience of fighting fires in Southern California is not a new one for Dave Batten of the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Sweet Home Unit office.
Batten worked as a firefighter in Southern California before moving to Oregon in 2017, then ODF, so he’d seen big fires in that region before.
But when he took off Jan. 9 for an 18-day stint assisting CalFire and other personnel fight the recent fires in that region, he…