Firefighting during a pandemic presents a different challenge
Groups are smaller, but widespread testing is not a reality
Firefighters are used to battling intense heat and unpredictable flames. But this fire season, they’re also grappling with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. And just as COVID-19 has upended daily life for millions of Americans, it’s altered how firefighters are battling the infernos burning across the Bay Area right now.
“The way the fire world typically operates is really being challenged by COVID,” said Amanda Stasiewicz, with the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University. “I think this is going to be a big learning season.”
Ordinarily, firefighters would gather in large groups for everything from briefings to eating and sleeping. Now, crews are clustering in smaller units and trying to social distance as much
as possible. Inmate firefighters stay in their own groups as do firefighters who have come in to help from states such as Utah and Idaho.
Base camps are larger to allow firefighters to spread out more, said Brice Bennett, a spokesman for Cal Fire, and masks are required. Firefighters space out to eat rather than crowding around a table, and they sleep head to feet.
In an ideal world, firefighters would be tested regularly for the virus to catch asymptomatic cases and prevent COVID-19 from spreading undetected. But that isn’t happening. Instead, firefighters are asked daily about whether they’re showing any symptoms of the virus and medical teams at each base camp regularly do temperature screenings.
So far, Bennett said, there have been no reports
Palo Alto Fire Department Capt. David Dahl says the sudden influx of firefighters from around the state has heightened coronavirus concerns among firefighters.
of coronavirus cases among those battling the current spate of fires.
“We’re all very, very conscious of how easily a cold even can spread through a base camp,” Bennett said.
Firefighters battling the CZU Complex Fire roaring through Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties don’t all attend morning briefings in person now, said local Cal Fire information officer Edwin Zuniga. Instead, leaders
of strike teams or divisions attend and pass the intel along to the crews in the field.
And, Zuniga said, “There’s hand sanitizer everywhere.”
But there are aspects of firefighting where the best ways to avoid COVID-19 — especially social distancing and mask wearing — just aren’t realistic.
While firefighters’ faces are often covered by a shroud that protects them
from flames, they don’t always wear them while actively fighting blazes, and the shrouds don’t seal the way some masks do. Firefighters have frequently been spotted in groups over the last week without masks, although the reminders to wear them are repeated frequently at base camps. And while firefighters spend a lot of time outdoors where they are less likely to get the virus than inside, they still travel with others in firetrucks and work shoulder to shoulder on the fire lines.
“There aren’t any good answers,” said Mary Prunicki, director of Air Pollution and Health Research at the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University. “They have to be out in it. They’re going to be at increased risk because of the closeness.”
In a statement, Santa Clara County said it met with fire officials during the Crews Fire that ripped through Gilroy in July about
COVID-19 safety procedures. The county assured Cal Fire that it has access to “all of our COVID-19 testing locations,” the county said.
But firefighters and fire officials say widespread, frequent testing just isn’t happening.
Palo Alto Fire Department Capt. David Dahl, volunteering with the Boulder Creek Volunteer Fire Department to fight the fire in the town where he was born and raised and still lives, said the sudden influx of firefighters into the area from around the state has heightened coronavirus concerns.
“We had so many people in every single firehouse, it was hard to create those separations and barriers — it was so chaotic,” Dahl said.
With the initial chaos subsiding, it’s become easier for firefighters to follow anti-infection protocols, but Dahl said many would like to receive coronavirus tests.
“People are wanting to be tested and they’re willing to be tested,” he said. “It’s just a matter of … the availability.”
In an optimal situation, Prunicki said, they would also get regular breaks to rest and recharge because their immune systems work best when they’re not fatigued.
Yet firefighters are working up to 16-hour days for two weeks straight and there aren’t enough crews to go around. The smoky conditions not only put them at elevated risk of coronavirus, Prunicki said, but also of a host of other potential longterm health consequences.
If a base camp does see an outbreak and firefighters are taken off the line, it could make existing shortages of personnel even more dire.
“We don’t have enough resources,” Stasiewicz said. “We’re having a lot of unfilled requests right now because there’s just not enough resources” to go around.