UC Davis firefighters are due back tonight (Aug. 24) after nearly a week of work on the massive Ponderosa Fire southeast of Redding. They’ll get 12 hours off ­— and then it’s back to work at the campus’s Station 34 in the morning.

And here’s hoping they’ll have it easier here after working grueling 24-hour shifts on the Northern California fire lines, where, at one point, the firefighters joined the rest of their strike team in laying a 4,500-foot section of hose into a canyon — and then taking it out.

This is what they call mop-up: Working in areas where the flames have been controlled, to check for and douse hot spots that could spark a new outbreak of fire.

Now headed back to the campus are Capt. Nate Hartinger, engineer Scott Hatcher, and firefighters Kyle Dubs and Paul Rush. Hatcher joined the crew at midweek, replacing John Hodge so he could get back to the campus for a promotional exam.

The UC Davis crew did its work with Cal EMA fire engine 364, belonging to the California Emergency Management Agency. The campus has free use of the engine for departmental operations; in return, the Fire Department provides a crew when Cal EMA calls up the engine.

The Ponderosa Fire started Aug. 18, the result of lightning, and, as of 8:25 a.m. today (Aug. 24) had burned 28,098 acres of grass, brush and timber, and destroyed 64 homes and 20 outbuildings. Officials reported 67 percent containment.

Elsewhere, UC Davis Capt. Dave Stiles is leading a strike team on the 321,000-acre Rush Fire. The team comprises five engines from other fire departments in Yolo County.

“Today they are involved in firing operations,” said John Heilmann, division chief for training and safety in the UC Davis Fire Department — referring to backfires, aimed at cleaning out fuel between containment lines and the main fire.

Sparked by lightning on Aug. 12, the fire is on federal land along the California-Nevada border, east and northeast of Susanville. Officials reported 64 percent containment as of this morning.

Fire cooks return to campus

Firefighters have to eat, and UC Davis helped on that end, too, with four Dining Commons chefs assigned to a fire camp in southwest Oregon for about a week.

The cooks — Mike Baldocchi and Darwin Gross of the Segundo Dining Commons, and Emily Cornejo and Mark Rivera of the Tercero Dining Commons — left for Oregon on three hours’ notice Aug. 13. Two of them returned Aug. 22 and the other two the day after.

The chefs are employees of Sodexo, the international company that runs Dining Services, and Sodexo has federal contracts for all kinds of food service — including fire camps.

The UC Davis chefs fed hundreds of firefighters on the Fort Complex, referring to three fires in close proximity to one another on the Klamath and Rogue River-Siskiyou national forests. Both forests straddle the Oregon-California border.

Lightning sparked the fires on Aug. 12, and, as of today, the fires — all on the California side of the border — had burned 6,683 acres of brush and timber. Officials reported 37 percent containment.