Cal Fire Fire Fighters Work 30 Days Straight

San Jose Mercury News, June 23, 2008 – State fire officials say a boost in early season manpower and equipment has helped them battle a fit of blazes across Central and Northern California.

But the early siege, including fires in areas that rarely see them - like Santa Cruz County - is straining state and local firefighting resources and spurring concern about how firefighters and their gear will hold up during a drawn-out fire season.

More than 4,300 Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighters are working with local and federal agencies to fight more than 800 active fires burning from near the Oregon border in Siskiyou County to the Sierra foothills to coastal Monterey County forests.

Kim Zagaris, fire and rescue chief for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, said the governor invoked interstate compacts Monday with both Nevada and Oregon. National Guard helicopters from those states are on their way, adding to the handful of California Guard helicopters that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered up Saturday. Also coming are military C-130 planes specially outfitted for air drops.

The agency has deployed more than 83 state and local strike teams. Several local agencies have contributed engines and crews, but some are holding back, worried about blazes that may spark close to home, Zagaris said.

That's not the case locally.

"For a fire department to flat out refuse to help another department, that's extremely frowned upon, to be nice about it," said Mike DeMars of Central Fire Protection District, which serves Capitola, Live Oak and Soquel. "If you've got the resource and you're not doing anything at the time, definitely you're going to help them out."

But Zagaris said the concern is both for now and later.

"It's gonna be tough. We're moving a lot of equipment a lot earlier than we normally do in large numbers," he said. "We're also watching just the fire activity, which is in some cases six to eight weeks ahead of schedule. There are safety concerns. Fires don't get less intense, they get more intense, and hotter."

Santa Cruz County's last major wildfire, before this year, was 23 years ago when the Lexington Reservoir Fire burned 14,000 acres. But firefighters have been training for blazes like this all along.

"In the past, we have sent crews to Southern California, Santa Barbara, L.A. County, on some of the larger fires there," said DeMars.

Those journeys - and lots of training - prepared his crews and others in the county for flames that consume hundreds of acres and take days to fight, like the Summit, Martin and Trabing fires that erupted around the county in the past month, DeMars said. The three fires burned more than 5,000 acres and destroyed more than 110 buildings.

Local fire crews remain ready to go largely because of a statewide mutual aid system that calls on firefighters who aren't battling a major flare-up at home to travel and help others who are.

That's what Fremont firefighter Richard Simon, who lived on Trabing Road, was doing when fire ripped through his property, burning his house to the ground and killing three of his goats. Simon was fighting the Indians Fire near King City at the time. His wife and sons, who were home when the fire started, escaped and saved their horses on their 3-acre property.

Simon has fire insurance, but the department held a fundraiser for the family, who is staying with friends for now.

Those who work for Cal Fire, generally can expect to spend summers hopping from one fire to the next, despite being stationed on the typically foggy Central Coast, said agency spokesman Paul Van Gerwen.

During the height of fire season, when blazes rage up and down the state, "as soon as you're cut from one fire, you're going to another fire," Van Gerwen said.

That's already true now, he said, after Saturday's lightning sparked more than 800 fires statewide, including 14 in Santa Cruz County. Some of Cal Fire's Santa Cruz County staff, he said, have worked more than 30 days straight.

That statewide coordination was on display last weekend, when the Trabing Fire took Watsonville's three engines outside city limits and left the city without fire coverage for half an hour, said Battalion Chief Will Farr.

Engines from Boulder Creek and North Monterey County filled the gap until off-duty reserve staff reported back. Aptos-La Selva was in a similar situation with all its engines responding to the fire until backup arrived.

The state reimburses local fire departments when firefighters are called to work around-the-clock in other regions, said Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant. So far this fiscal year, which ends June 30, the state has spent almost $300 million fighting fires.

A 114-year record low in precipitation statewide from March through May has launched what fire experts figure to be an extended summer of blazes and bad air. Already this year fire has claimed more than 175 homes, many in coastal areas that rarely see flames - what firefighters like to call "the asbestos forest," said Zagaris.

Not this year. Much of the Northern California coast saw about 10 percent of normal rainfall, according to the Western Regional Climate Center.

Fearing a long, brutal fire season, Schwarzenegger ordered up an early mobilization of firefighters and equipment, authorizing an additional 1,100 seasonal firefighters.

"Everybody is on full summer operational plans by now," said William Stewart, a forestry specialist at UC Cooperative Extension. "The challenge is, by the time August comes around, if everybody's been working overtime continuously, people are going to get sick, injured. They're going to be just exhausted. Machinery breaks. You always have a few aircraft accidents. Every once in a while they roll a fire truck. Bulldozers get jammed. Those are going to add up."

In the wake of blazes in Southern California last fall that claimed 2,200 homes, a state task force in January recommended beefing up the state fleet of fire engines, better coordination of state and federal military equipment, improved training programs and other steps aimed at increasing the state's "surge" capacity for fires.

The situation in the past few days, with scores of lightning-sparked fires, highlights the need for more equipment and resources in local areas, said Carroll Wills, spokesman for California Professional Firefighters and a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission Task Force.

"There are fires going right now in remote areas that simply aren't being responded to. They can't get the resources into them, because of location or because the state is stretched so thin," said Wills. "There's this perception the fire problem is a Southern California problem. If anything gives lie to that, it's the situation we're facing now."