Los Angeles (CNN) Capt. Leonard Dimaculangan hugged his daughter for the first time in a month after battling flames half way across the world in Australia.

"I'm glad that he gets to help me with my homework now," Dimaculangan's daughter, Promise, joked.

Dimaculangan and 19 other firefighters with Angeles National Forest returned to California on Wednesday after they volunteered to help contain the devastating bushfires in Australia.

While the firefighters created fire break lines and cut down or cleared burned trees as they have done many times back home, they had to learn how to handle burning eucalyptus trees and the lingo of their counterparts.

"The dead standing trees are called 'snags' in California and in Australia they call them 'stags,'" Dimaculangan explained at the homecoming, held at the Los Angeles Fire Department's Station 5.

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