Crews lament longer fire season that spawns erratic blazes
Exhausted and hungry, some 12,000 firefighters are working 24-hour shifts battling deadly California wildfires and becoming resigned to fire seasons that start earlier, burn longer and unleash increasingly unpredictable blazes.
“There’s a lot going on up here, endless fires, and they’re all characteristically pretty much the same - windy, hot and dry,” firefighter James Sweeney said before heading out for a meal and a nap.
Sweeney, from St. Petersburg, Florida, is a “hotshot,” part of an elite team of highly trained wildland firefighters who spend fire season battling the fiercest blazes in the country.
Weary after more than a day on the fire lines, the 43-year-old said when his Gila, New Mexicobased crew does leave California, he expects to go north into Oregon, where new fires are kicking up.
“These days it’s crazy,” he said. “We give up our whole life all summer.”
Crews made progress this weekend on the Carr Fire near Redding, about 230 miles (370 kilometres) north of San Francisco. But it was still threatening thousands of homes and was not expected to be fully contained until mid-August at the earliest.
For many of the firefighters slamming down 9,000-calorie meals between shifts, the
nonstop effort has become routine.
Last year, a fast-moving series of fires in Santa Rosa, just north of San Francisco, and elsewhere in Northern California killed 44 people and destroyed more than 8,000 structures. Last December’s Thomas Fire near Santa Barbara burned almost 282,000 acres (440 square miles), becoming the largest wildfire in California history.
In his 19 years on the job, Cal Fire Capt. Chris Anthony said the most significant change is that hotter, drier conditions now mean that firefighters are trained to take a “tactical pause” to reconsider before charging in against the flames.
“Fire has become a lot more unpredictable,” he said. “In the past we could plan, but these days a fire can
take a sudden and deadly turn.”
That’s what happened Thursday, when the fire near Redding pivoted and exploded in size, taking down hundreds of homes and killing five people, two of them firefighters. Another firefighter was killed earlier in the month battling a giant fire near Yosemite National Park.
Firefighter Jason Campbell was on the front lines Thursday near Yosemite when the Carr Fire destroyed his home, an RV and a boat near Redding. Redding Police Chief Roger Moore also lost his home.
Capt. Jarrett Grassl, a 19-year veteran who works for the Higgins Fire District in Northern California, said his crew ran into homeowners trying to save their own properties.