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Fifteen soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 108th Aviation, Kansas National Guard, left Salina for California on Saturday to help fight wildfires.

They deployed from the Army Aviation Support Facility to an airfield southwest of Sacramento, Calif., according to a press release from the Adjutant General's Department.

The Kansas Guardsmen will fly two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters equipped with 660-gallon buckets that can scoop water from lakes and rivers and dump it on the flames, the release said.

The Guardsmen and helicopters are deploying to California under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, a multistate agreement about aid between states during major disasters.

Kansas has given aid to other states before, including fire-fighting in Montana and Oklahoma, donation management in New York following the terrorist attacks, hurricane assistance in the Gulf Coast, and, most recently, help with flooding in Iowa.

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