Cal Fire chief is retiring; led agency through two horrific wildfire seasons

Thom Porter announced his retirement Monday as director of Cal Fire, following two of the toughest wildfire seasons in California’s history.

In an email to employees, Porter said he will leave the agency on Dec. 10, almost three years to the day when he was named acting director by former Gov. Jerry Brown. He was named permanent director a month later, in January 2019, on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first full day on the job.

In his email, Porter said he plans to return to San Diego “to focus on family, aging parents, and self.” He said he’s leaving “with bittersweet feelings, balanced by deep pride” for Cal Fire.

Porter has presided over an agency that’s been on the front lines of California’s struggles with the effects of climate change. In his final year, Cal Fire’s budget has grown to more than $3.4 billion as a staff of more than 8,000 employees has tried to cope with ever-worsening wildfire threats in a hotter, drier state.

Porter took over Cal Fire following the devastating wildfires of 2017 and 2018, capped by the destruction of much of Paradise in the Camp Fire. The fire killed 85 people, more than any other wildfire in California history.

While 2019 brought only one major wildfire to the state, the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, it was followed by last year’s worst-ever wildfire season. A host of major fires, most of them caused by a lightning storm, burned more than 4 million acres, more than any other season. The West Zone of the North Complex Fire killed 15 people in the small Butte County community of Berry Creek.

This year saw another 2.5 million acres burn. The year’s biggest fire, the Dixie Fire, was the second-largest in California history and destroyed most of the historic business district in the Plumas County community of Greenville. The Caldor Fire burned up much of tiny

Grizzly Flats, in the Eldorado National Forest, and prompted the evacuation of South Lake Tahoe.

Porter began at Cal Fire in 1999 as a forester and has served as chief of strategic planning, southern region chief, San Diego unit fire chief and other posts.

He’s been an advocate for more aggressive forest management. During a visit this summer to the Mendocino National Forest with Newsom and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the Cal Fire chief noted that last year’s August Complex fire, which burned more than 1 million acres in and around the Mendocino forest, chewed through flammable chaparral and brush that had sprouted in recent years.

“If we don’t put holes in it, it’ll burn everything,” he said. The August Complex fire remains the largest in the state’s history.