With fire season beginning earlier every year, blazes are burning across California even before the official start of summer and firefighters are already working relentlessly to protect the state’s wildlands.
A photograph posted on Twitter by the Los Padres National Forest staff that since has gone viral shows just how hard fire crews are working.
An image of Capt. Justin Grunewald, a firefighter with San Bernardino County’s Mill Creek Hotshots who was battling the Willow fire near Big Sur, has received more than 9,000 likes on Twitter and has been shared more than 2,400 times.
The image, captured by Hotshots colleague Capt. Lincoln Peters and published Thursday, shows Grunewald sitting on a railing of the Horse Bridge near the Arroyo Seco Campground. Grunewald is covered in soot, his fire helmet resting upside-down at his feet and his shaved head bent forward as he seemingly gathers his strength for a return to the front lines of the fire.
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