Resources:
California calls for out-of-state firefighting help with crews stretched thin.
SACRAMENTO — A California firefighting system that has come up short of resources repeatedly in recent years is struggling again to handle the hundreds of blazes that broke out this week following lightning storms, and officials are turning to neighboring states for help.
“We are experiencing fires the likes of which we haven’t seen in many, many years,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news conference Wednesday. “That is a resource challenge where they are stretched in ways where we haven’t seen in the last few years.”
Cal Fire is battling 367 wildfires, 23 of which are considered major, Newsom said, including the CZU August Lightning Complex in the Santa Cruz area and the LNU Lightning Complex near Vacaville.
Officials have requested 375 fire engines from outofstate agencies, as well as additional hand crews, through its emergency management assistance compact. Arizona and Nevada have already sent equipment, while Texas has offered some firefighting crews, Newsom said.
But the situation is complicated by the severe heat wave across the Western United States that has intensified fire conditions and strained resources in other states as well. Newsom said he hoped that cooling temperatures later in the week would free up more support.
“The stretch of these requests is not lost on anyone,” he said.
Lynnette Round, a Cal Fire information officer, said there are already about 6,900 personnel from state, local and federal agencies assigned to the California fires.
“We have a drawdown of these resources because of all the fires that we’re facing,” she said. “We just try and get as much as we can because have so many fires going on, and we do have property and life that are at stake.”
California’s mutual aid system is designed to swiftly bring in help when local firefighters are overwhelmed, first from nearby counties, then from across the state and, if necessary, from around the country. The program, operated by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, has long been considered a model, but it has become strained by the growing size and frequency of wildfires.
During the early hours of the 2017 North Bay fires, as commanders faced a rapidly growing crisis, fewer than half the fire engines and crews requested through the mutual aid system arrived to help tamp down the blazes and evacuate trapped residents, a Chronicle investigation found.
A similar pattern was reported in 2018, when thousands of requests for local, regional or state assistance went unfilled as multiple blazes burned up and down California.
During the first two days of the Woolsey Fire in Los Angeles County — which destroyed more than 1,500 homes and other structures in November 2018 — fewer than half the requested fire engines arrived, an afteraction report found.
The “inability to send large quantities of firefighting units” in recent years “has become a serious fire command issue,” Los Angeles County officials wrote after the fire.
In 2012, there were 134 requests for fire engines or water tenders that went unfilled across California. That number grew to roughly 6,100 in 2017 before dropping to about 2,700 the following year.
Brad Bihun, a public information officer for the SCU Lightning Complex blaze, which is burning in parts of the East Bay and South Bay, said Wednesday: “We’re at a point right now where resources are thin, they’re depleted.”
He was unable to provide a breakdown of how many engines were requested through the mutual aid system and how many were received.
“They’re calling for all resources needed — it just depends if they’re available or if they’re already committed to another incident,” Bihun said.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, firefighting efforts against the CZU August Lightning Complex, a 10,000acre combination of blazes in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties, were complicated Tuesday night and Wednesday by a “sheer lack of resources,” said Cal Fire’s unit chief for the two counties, Ian Larkin.
“Right now we are in the position (where) we have no resources to put out on the line today, so we’ll be doubleshifting all of our resources that are currently on the line,” Larkin said. “This is a significant safety hazard for our firefighters that are out there as well as the communities that we’re out there trying to protect.”
The governor acknowledged the strain on the mutual aid system in an executive order Tuesday declaring a state of emergency related to the wildfire. But he said Wednesday that the problem was not why California turned to other states for help.
“It’s just how stretched up and down the state the vast majority of counties (are) that are experiencing, because of these lightning strikes, all of these fires,” Newsom said. “The mutual aid system, at this moment, is working as it’s designed. And it is not designed to be perfect in every way, shape or form, because localism maintains a determination, meaning local authorities maintain discretion as it relates to what they provide and what they support.”
The demand on firefighting resources has been exacerbated this year by the coronavirus pandemic, which reduced the availability of inmates who volunteer to clear dry brush and build break lines in exchange for a reduction to their sentences and a small salary. Last month, Newsom announced the hiring of 858 seasonal firefighters to replace prison crews that were quarantined after several inmates tested positive for the virus.
The governor said Wednesday that the state has filled 830 of those positions.
“Rather than lamenting about it, we prepared for it,” he said. “We’re getting them out on the front lines.”
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Demian Bulwa contributed to this report.