New Zealand lending firefighting expertise to American wildfire response

23 July 2026

Five experienced incident management specialists leave for the United States of America tomorrow (Friday) as part of a joint Australasian contingent supporting America’s response to an intense wildfire season.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand is deploying the team to Idaho under longstanding agreements with the USA, Canada and Australia to provide mutual assistance with wildfire suppression. 

Four members are Fire and Emergency personnel and the fifth is from the forestry industry. They will be embedded in local incident management teams to perform senior roles: two will be managing helicopter operations bases, one will be a heavy equipment boss and one an operations branch director. The fifth will be in a liaison role representing New Zealand.

Fire and Emergency Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler says New Zealand’s own fire management capability is enhanced by international deployments. They provided an opportunity to gain experience in complex, large-scale, long duration vegetation fires of the kind not seen in New Zealand.

“The team will bring back what they learn and share their knowledge with colleagues here, and our own response capability will benefit from it,” Megan Stiffler says. “And in return, our team will be sharing their own extensive skills and experience – that cross-pollination of knowledge is priceless.”

New Zealand regularly deploys firefighters and incident management team members to Australia and North America, drawing on personnel from Fire and Emergency and partner agencies including the forestry industry, Department of Conservation and New Zealand Defence Force. This deployment will be the 71st supported by Fire and Emergency and its predecessor organisations. The first deployment to the USA was in 2000 under the auspices of the National Rural Fire Authority.

The five team members heading to Idaho come from Southland, Otago, Auckland and Northland. They will be in the USA for five weeks.