After 16 tiring days of battling fires and breathing in smoke, it was a bittersweet feeling to come home for 22 Santa Clara County firefighters.

A crew from the Santa Clara County Fire Department returned home Oct. 24 after more than two weeks of providing aid during the North Bay fires.

Strike Team XSC 2310C made its first stop back in the South Bay at the Sunnyoaks Fire Station in Campbell to drop off engine rigs. It was there that Battalion Chief Shanna Kuempel praised the group for its work and for keeping the team together during what she described as an emotional mission.

The strike team, a five-engine operation, was dispatched on Oct. 9 in the early hours of the morning and drove straight to Santa Rosa to the Fountain Grove area.

“They woke me up and told me we were going to the North Bay,” said Battalion Chief Jason Falarski.

Firefighters from Santa Clara Valley piled into five rigs with water and equipment. Once they arrived in Sonoma County, team members were immediately struck by the fires’ devastating impacts.

“Upon our arrival around 8 o’clock, we just saw fire on both sides of the freeway,” said Capt. Parker Patri. “Upon arrival, we just saw devastation. It was house after house, block after block literally obliterated from the fire.”

According to Capt. Bill Murphy, the crew stayed at the incident base camp, located at the Santa Rosa Event Center/Sonoma County Fair Grounds and equipped with a mobile kitchen, sleeping tents and trailers with bathrooms and showers. The crew initially worked 56 hours straight, switching off for catnaps and then returning to work protecting structures that were not on fire, according to Falarski.

Crews would rotate at camp to rest, grab food, prepare equipment and get fire updates. Patri said structures that were saved most anything that was already on fire could not be saved due to lack of manpower and water.

“Those two things alone prevented us from putting out any structures that were on fire. We felt really sorry for the losses of these people,” Patri said.

Despite being from the South Bay, the experience hit plenty close to home for many crew members. Murphy said this fire felt more personal to many on the strike team.

“We have families, and because it’s so close and a lot of us grew up in the Bay Area, chances are we had someone on our engine who had family and friends there,” he said. “A lot of the firefighters we have known or are connected somehow directly to what’s happening there.”

Patri said he was raised in Sonoma, and seeing the devastation was overwhelming. He said his family, including his brother-in-law, sister-in-law, sister and mother, were evacuated. Falarski also checked on a friend’s business in the Fountain Grove area.

“I went in there and was able to help him out,” Falarski said. “His business is still there.”

In Patri’s 27 years of fire service, he said there’s only been one blaze that compares to the North Bay fires in terms of size and destruction: the Cedar Fire in 2003 in San Diego County.

The assist in the North Bay is Patri’s last mission with the strike team. He was set to retire this week.

“I signed up for this assignment not knowing the magnitude,” Patri said. “Going out, I’m not going to say it’s with a bang. It’s historical. It’s an historical event.”

Murphy said the communities affected by the fires are going to rely on their neighbors, friends and the extended Bay Area family for years to come during the rebuild.