Two U.S. Forest Service employees from Greene County are among some 40 Cherokee National Forest employees who are helping battle forest fires in California and other states.

Cheryl Summers, the Natural Resource Management Team leader for the Nolichucky/Unaka Ranger District of the Cherokee National Forest, said District Ranger Terry Bowerman and Laurel Reaves, a receptionist at the district ranger office, are deployed to California.

Summers said Bowerman departed Greeneville on June 24 and is expected to return on Friday, July 11.

Reached by cell phone in Chester, Calif., on Tuesday morning, Bowerman said he is working as a situation unit leader trainee with a U.S. Forest Service Incident Management team.

Bowerman said the team manages all aspects of fighting fires from coordinating use of firefighters, heavy equipment and helicopters to making sure that firefighters get paid.

The U.S. Forest Service employees with whom Bowerman is assigned in California are working two shifts per day to produce the information that managers of fire-fighting efforts need to plan each day's response to the fires.

That information, he said, includes determining everything from current, and expected, weather conditions to the estimated rate of spread of the various fires.

Also gathered twice daily, Bowerman said, is information about the current size and direction of movement of all fires, along with information about available resources, injuries and structures threatened by forest fires.

Bowerman said he currently is assigned to a unit that is coordinating fire-fighting efforts in connection with a group of fires called the "Cub Complex."

The two fires that comprise the Cub Complex had burned 11,124 acres of northern California as of Tuesday morning.

"That's a medium-sized fire out here," Bowerman said, noting that more than 300 fires are currently burning across northern California.

Bowerman said Reaves is working in Redding, Calif., where she is assigned to the team that is coordinating overall firefighting efforts in northern California.

Don Koger, another Nolichucky/Unaka District employee, was deployed to California earlier. While there, Koger served as a timekeeper, Summers said.

Bowerman said about 40 U.S. Forest Service employees from all parts of the Cherokee National Forest are helping fight forest fires in California, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

That, he said, is a considerable number, given that the Cherokee National Forest has only about 150 full-time employees.

The Cherokee National Forest extends along the Tennessee-North Carolina border from near Chattanooga in the south to the Virginia border in the north. The forest is broken only by the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

During a Tuesday morning interview, Bowerman said he likely will have to return to California again in coming weeks.

"The fire season started in California about two months earlier this year than it usually does," Bowerman said.

The "Cherokee Hotshots," a specialized U.S. Forest Service firefighting team based in Unicoi, has not yet been committed to the western fires but likely will be sent west soon, Summers said.