State adds 900 firefighters

Fewer inmate crews available this year

California will hire nearly 900 new seasonal firefighters to make up for a dwindling number of firefighting inmates as wildfires already have blackened more acreage than last year.

The state has long relied on thousands of incarcerated firefighters as the “infantry” of its forces fighting wildfires. But with an outbreak of the novel coronavirus at a key Northern California training hub, combined with efforts to reduce numbers of prisoners, only 94 of the state’s 192 inmate fire crews are available.

“We are now walking right into the thick of firefighting season,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a press briefing Friday, standing in front of a new Blackhawk helicopter intended to bolster the state’s fire suppression efforts. “Let us be vigilant.”

So far, slightly more acreage has burned this year compared with last year. But it’s less than half the average annual acreage burned over the past five years; fires scorched 23,640 California acres through July 5th, compared to an average of 51,215.

In all, 4,112 fires have ignited in California so far this year, far exceeding the five-year average of 2,580 fires through the beginning of July.

Typically, roughly 2,200 inmates are on the frontlines of firefighting in California. But Thom Porter, director of Cal Fire — the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — said he expects the inmate crews to reach 75 percent capacity by the end of the season.

Porter said the 858 new seasonal firefighters and an additional six crews for the California Conservation Corps will “backstop” the inmates available in the hand crews that use tools and chainsaws to cut firelines. California’s budget also includes $85.6 million for firefighting resources, including an additional

172 full time staff for Cal Fire’s workforce, according to Newsom.

“But we are also looking at what the reality is right now,” Porter said. “We don’t have those crews and we might not. COVID might infect firefighters and/or hand crews and keep them out of the firefight for a quarantine period, or longer.”

Porter said that Cal Fire will be aggressive about keeping fires small, which he said is key for reducing the threats to public health and costs associated with letting fires burn.

Porter called this approach “the original Smokey Bear model” in an interview with Smithsonian.

“While we are in the COVID pandemic, we have to reduce smoke impacts to communities from long burning wildfires, even in exposure to our firefighters,” Porter told Smithsonian. “We have to keep fires small. Yes, it’s a throwback and not what I want in the future. But it’s something we need to do this year.”

Exposure to wildfire smoke may worsen coronavirus infections and, conversely, coronavirus infections may also increase health risks from breathing smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While California has contained the area burned so far, the months ahead are expected to prime the state to burn.

After a dry winter and a warm spring, California is seeing moderate to severe drought in the northern half of the state, with extreme drought hitting the border with Oregon.