Can California handle this many wildfires at once? Crews and equipment already ‘depleted’

California’s ability to fight wildfires, already compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic, is being severely strained by a rash of lightning strikes and a stupefying array of new fires.

As major fires burned from Lake County to the South Bay, Cal Fire officials said Wednesday they’re struggling to keep up with 367 new fires that have broken out over the past three days, the result of nearly 11,000 lightning strikes.

“Firefighting resources are depleted as new fires continue to ignite,” said Jeremy Rahn, a Cal Fire spokesman, at a press briefing in Calistoga on the fires burning in the North Bay. He said Cal Fire is asking out-of-state agencies to rush 375 fire engines to the state, and share “hand crews” and other resources.

“The demand for hand crews far surpasses available resources,” he said.

All told, about 6,900 firefighters are deployed across the state, but the agency is seeking help from wherever it can. Cal Fire spokeswoman Lynnette Round said in an interview: “We’re trying to get whatever is available.”

Last summer, Cal Fire had 343 fire engines, operating out of 234 fire stations. The agency also operated 12 air attack bases, and 10 helitack bases, according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report.

The new fires are putting to the test Gov. Gavin Newsom’s vow earlier this year to protect Californians from fire. Visiting a Cal Fire station in Cameron Park in May, he said the new state budget included hundreds of millions of dollars for new staffing and equipment even as the state wrestled with severe budget problems because of the collapse of the economy.

“We are not going to step back despite the economic headwinds,” he said.

Three months later, Cal Fire has been suddenly confronted with fires breaking out seemingly everywhere, including the LNU Lightning Complex fires that have destroyed more than 50 homes in the North Bay and were forcing evacuations of hundreds if not thousands of people Wednesday morning in Vacaville. The Jones Fire in Nevada County had burned four structures, and major fires were burning in the Bay Area south of San Francisco.

“Resources are stretched really, really thin,” said Ken Hale, a retired Cal Fire battalion chief and union leader who lives about four miles from the Jones Fire.

In a press conference Wednesday, Newsom agreed. But he said the state’s budget includes $85.6 million to hire additional firefighters, plus $72.4 million to hire 858 temporary firefighters, of whom 830 of them have already been hired.

The fires have “certainly stretched the resources of the state,” Newsom said. “We’ve put out every resource we have.” He thanked the governors of Nevada, Arizona and Texas for committing equipment and personnel to California.

“This is an incredibly resilient state,” he said. “We will get through this moment in time as we have in the past. Many of these conditions, while they may be stacked up on top of each other, are familiar.”

Part of California’s problem is that investments in new equipment don’t pay immediate dividends. The state ordered a dozen new firefighting helicopters, at $25 million apiece, but they won’t all arrive until 2022. Similarly, a fleet of seven C-130 transport planes being purchased from the Pentagon has to be retrofitted and won’t begin to show up until next year.

How COVID-19 is sidelining fire crews

It’s been 12 years since a shower of lightning strikes ignited a slew of fires all at once in California. The big difference now is that Cal Fire is already hamstrung by the coronavirus, which has depleted its stock of inmate fire crews and complicated its ability to deploy firefighters to the front lines.

“They can’t put as many firefighters next to each other on the fire line,” said Bill Stewart, a UC Berkeley wildfire expert. “The pickup trucks (transporting crews) are historically full of people. Now they’re limited to one or two.”

Last month, the state said it expected to have about a dozen fewer inmate crews available for wildfire duty, partly because thousands of inmates have been released because of virus risks. The total inmate population is down 9% from a year ago, according to Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation data.

Last month, the state had to place a dozen inmate camps on lockdown after a major COVID-19 outbreak at a Lassen County prison where prisoners are trained on fire.

“We’ve had some camps that have had to lock down, and you have to wait a certain amount of time before those crews go back up,” Round said. “That does impact us a little bit.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that no inmate crews are currently on COVID-19 lockdown, but the number of inmates are down significantly since last summer. In 2019, there were 2,800 inmate firefighters. This year, there are only 2,026.

Inmates are the state’s primary “hand crews” who use hand tools and chainsaws to cut firelines, often in locations where bulldozers can’t go or if there aren’t enough of the machines available.

Cal Fire officials have previously said they planned to use National Guard troops and Conservation Corps workers to offset at least some of the lost inmate labor.