Firefighter's Selfie After Battling California Wildfires Goes Viral

A firefighter’s picture of himself and his coworkers exhausted after battling wildfires in California has gone viral in a big way today.

Firefighter Tim Bergon took the selfie to show his wife that he was alive and well after battling the Cocos fire that raged throughout San Marcos in San Diego County.His colleagues can be seen in the background, resting after long hours of fighting the fires.

Plan 9 Alehouse, a restaurant in Escondido posted the picture to their Facebook page, captioned “Thank you!!!” According to CBS 8, the owners of the restaurant are friends with the Bergon and his family. The picture quickly racked up almost 35,000 likes and 4,000 shares.

“When you see how exhausted they are, it just makes you really, really grateful for all that they do, and all they always do,” said Monica Calles, the owner of Plan 9. “It touched us, so we passed it on.”

“I think they were just really grateful, I think the word everybody was thinking is, ‘thank you, thank you’, you can’t really say thank you enough,” she said of the outpouring of support on Facebook. Calles’s restaurant is also giving out free food to firefighters.

Investigations are still underway as to what caused the fires, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses across tens of thousands of acres in the region.