The extremes in California’s weather, from summer wildfires to the deluge of winter storms, keep firefighters and rescue teams busy year-round.

The winter storms pummeling California could cost the state more than one-billion-dollars in damages, but thanks to the heroic efforts of firefighters and first responders, many more lives were spared. Los Angeles Times reporter Brittny Mejia wrote about some of the harrowing rescues and joined Lisa McRee on "LA Times Today" with more.

Firefighters spend a lot of time training for all types of emergencies, from river rescues to HAZMAT situations.

"We think of firefighters, and we only think fire," said Meja. "They are dealing increasingly with year-round wildfire seasons, but they're also doing a lot of other things. They're trained for HAZMAT, they're trained for swift water rescues. And so they go way beyond just fighting fires. They're actually going out in real-world situations, scenarios to be prepared in the event that there are there are storms or there is flooding."

During January's storms, firefighters saved hundreds of people whose homes were flooding or who were stranded. Mejia talked about one rescue in Oakland. 

"There were two people who were trapped on top of a vehicle in a river," she said. "In this case, [rescuers] were trying to figure out how they were going to reach them. What was the safest thing? And what they ended up doing was putting a ladder across to an island that was in the water. So they put the ladder across the water, and they're basically climbing the ladder over the water to reach first one island and then setting another ladder to reach the car."

Mejia talked about what drives the firefighters to put themselves in danger to help others.

"They want to rescue people," she said. "They want to help people who are in need. I think the storms really illustrated how many people were in need of rescue. There were so many people who died, but there were still hundreds of others who were saved because of the efforts of these rescue teams."

Click the arrow above to watch the full interview.

Watch "LA Times Today" at 7 and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday on Spectrum News 1 and the Spectrum News app.