(photo courtesy of the 4th Council District Office)

Councilmen David Ryu (left), 4th District, Bob Blumenfield, 3rd District, and Paul Koretz, 5th District joined Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas (second from left) on Jan. 20 to honor local firefighters who traveled to the Middle East last November on their own time to help Israeli authorities battle wildfires. From Nov. 26 through Dec. 1, six LAFD firefighters and one firefighter from the Los Angeles County Fire Department traveled to Israel as part of the Emergency Volunteer Project (EVP). Since 2009, EVP has trained more than 950 emergency volunteers and professional first responders throughout the United States and Israel. EVP’s mission is to create trained and certified volunteer teams that will deploy to Israel during crises. The training and trip to Israel was funded by the firefighters. They included LAFD firefighters Elan Raber, Shaun Gath, Aaron Brownell and Ben Arnold, as well as engineer Dennis Roach, retired LAFD apparatus operator Mike Porper and Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighter Jake Windell.