Complex sentence: During the fall of 1996, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center assigned Mims to fly at a moment's notice to a series of 7 major forest fires in Utah, California, Wyoming and Montana.
Split into simpler sentences: During the fall of 1996, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center assigned him to fly at a moment's notice to 7 major forest fires. The fires were in Utah, California, Wyoming and Montana.