This story on wildfire mutual aid was produced by CalMatters, an independent public journalism venture covering California politics and government. For more info, visit calmatters.org.
By Julie Cart (for CalMatters)
On the surface, fighting wildfires doesn’t appear to require delicacy or nuance. Fire bosses speak in the language of war: weapons, attack, suppression, control.
But to effectively manage a wildfire is to engage in an intricate game of multi-dimensional chess: moving firefighters and equipment where they are most needed or where they are predicted to be required, then coaxing and caring for these resources so that they can continue to be used and moved around a fiery board.
Take the Park Fire, which is blazing through Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties, already consuming about 415,000 acres. Now burning for three weeks, it’s the fourth largest fire in California history.
It’s a difficult fire to manage because of the steep, remote terrain, its early start in the season and the nearly 30,000 other wildfires around the country this year that have been gobbling up firefighters and equipment.
“Some people might ask, ‘Are there enough resources in California?’,” Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler said during a news conference from the Borel Fire in Kern County. A fire chief’s standard response is ‘Yes, but we could use more.’ Thanks to mutual aid, help is here and more is coming from around the state, nation and world, Tyler said.
As Cal Fire wrestles with long shifts, stressful conditions, sizzling heatwaves and budget restraints, California’s statewide mutual aid pact and reciprocal assistance from crews across the U.S. and other nations are critical to ensuring there’s enough firefighters to battle its intensifying wildfires.
California “is very successful at handling its incidents” with its own platoons of firefighters and specially-equipped fleets of aircraft, said Sean Peterson, manager of the federal government’s National Interagency Coordination Center, which triages the nation’s large fires by deciding where to send reinforcements. “They have more resources, with state and federal cooperators, than the rest of the U.S. combined.”
At the Park Fire, a dusty parking lot at the Silver Dollar Fairground near Chico is crammed with red, yellow and green fire engines and crew trucks emblazoned with the logo of the agency that sent them.
Jeff Whitehouse, an engineer with the Ventura County Fire Department, sat in his fire engine on a recent day, with the air conditioning blasting against the 100-degree-plus temperatures at the Park Fire command post.
He had been on the fire for a week and, after working shifts of 24 hours on and 24 hours off, he said his priorities are sharply focused: “Hydrate, eat and sleep,” Whitehouse said. “On days off, after I get myself squared away, I don’t have trouble sleeping. Then it’s back at it.”
Emiliano Lopez, a firefighter from the Riverside County Fire Department, said he hasn’t had a bad day yet, that he’s managing the heat, takes time to rest and tries to take breaks when he can.
State officials say implementing a shortened 66-hour workweek — down from 72 hours — and a plan to phase in more firefighters over five years will take some of the stress off overworked Cal Fire firefighters. For wildfires, state crews stay as needed, generally working 14 to 21 days before they are rotated out.
“Our focus is on getting the health welfare and rest time,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuna. “It used to be that the large incidents were so infrequent that you’d get to go home for a week. We have made a more concerted effort to make those 21-day cycles a reality and allow people more time at home.”
Cal Fire would not allow its firefighters at the Park Fire to be interviewed by CalMatters.
The fire is so vast that the fairground is one of two incident command posts established to better stage the nearly 6,600 personnel on the fire.
According to Chris Hardy, Cal Fire’s deputy chief of command and control, federal fire crews from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are deployed on California fires.
Hand crews from the California Conservation Corps and the National Guard are working firelines. The state Office of Emergency Services assigned hundreds of engines from local jurisdictions to join the fight.
Outside of California, help is coming from all points of the compass. Texas dispatched 25 engines, Utah sent engines and water tenders and Nevada deployed an engine. A fire engine from North Dakota is making its way to the state. A cadre of fire supervisors from Florida, Arkansas and Oregon are working California fires.
And a group from the New York City Fire Department is assisting with a complex of fires in the Sequoia National Forest.
Two waves of Australian firefighters — whose extensive experience and familiarity with California fires is highly prized — are expected to arrive this week. Canada, a reliable partner, is enduring its own fire assault and regrets it cannot help.
“I got calls from governors on the East Coast who were willing to send help,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “That’s a hell of a thing.”
It’s a two-way assistance channel: Despite its already severe fire year — with almost four times more acreage burned so far than the average for this time of year — California already has sent crews to Oregon and Texas, state officials said.
A nationwide Level 5 alert — the highest
Tyler praised California’s wildfire mutual aid system for its ability to marshall resources from cooperating agencies quickly. The agreements are pledges that when calls for help come in from another agency within California, fire departments will answer if they can.
The state’s overall fire response is bifurcated, with north and south operations centers set up to more nimbly respond to fires in each region.
With nearly 4,900 fires in California so far this year, and more sparking every day, the system’s limits are being tested.
“We recognize the need to order additional resources,” Tyler said. “We continue to reach out and ask for resources across the U.S.”
Some of those requests are sent to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, where Peterson oversees the daily national fire situation report, making decisions on where to send crews, engines and planes.
With the U.S. now on Preparedness Level 5, the highest, it’s a sobering outlook. It’s only the fourth time in 20 years that the alert level has been reached so early in the summer.
For those requesting assistance, and for those sending it, it’s starting to be everything, everywhere, all at once.
“All of our western geographic areas are ordering resources,” Peterson said. “When I came in at 7 o’clock today, we already had 800 orders sitting here. No large fire is going to get every resource they ask for right now. We are almost fully committed with our resources.”
Peterson, who was born in Redding and grew up in Paradise, scene of California’s most-deadly fire, is a third-generation firefighter who used to work for Cal Fire before joining the U.S. Forest Service.
As the chessmaster responsible for moving much of the nation’s firefighting pieces, Peterson said the current challenge is “we don’t have people to send. It’s a balancing act, it can be a chess game. It’s a game we have been playing for several decades.”
Newsom said last week that “a lot of mutual aid is being stretched to West-wide fires,” acknowledging that California is not always the top national priority.
“We haven’t skimped on staffing, we have a record number of personnel. When I got here as governor we had 6,700 personnel at Cal Fire. Today, more than 9,700 men and women work at Cal Fire,” Newsom said at a news conference.
Rest “is paramount” for Hotshots, state crews
The Forest Service has adjusted, too. The standard staffing on its Hotshot crews in recent years has expanded to 25. These highly-trained crews are often positioned at the most dangerous parts of fires. With at least 18 members required to deploy, a firefighter who needs to stand down can do so without affecting the functionality of the crew.
The Park Fire, stubborn and dangerous, has grown into a “campaign fire,” an informal designation that acknowledges it’s a blaze likely to be around for some time. The million-acre August Complex fire in 2020 burned in seven Northern California counties for nearly three months.
On a fireline, that translates into days and nights that blur. Sixteen-hour shifts or longer are not uncommon. Already tired crews settle into a rhythm of hours on the fire followed by a handful of hours to shower, eat and, critically, sleep.
“Getting the crew sufficient rest is paramount for me once we are off the fireline,” said Dan Mallia, superintendent for the Redding Hot Shots, an elite Forest Service team that worked the Park Fire.
He said the fire service has a better understanding of the link between sleep and maintaining physical and mental health. To that end, some crews sleep in specially retrofitted trailers at the incident command post, others, such as Cal Fire, stay in local hotels.
But fire camps, which can be loud, bustling places with round-the-clock lights and noise, are not ideal places to rest. Mallia said after decades of fighting fires in remote places in California, “I know all the hidey-holes. It needs to be quiet and it needs to be dark. We find a campsite, put a sleeping pad down and get in our bags. I’ve slept in hundreds of high school gyms.”
Veteran firefighters joke about being able to sleep standing up. Talking this week while waiting for his team to be assigned, Mallia said the crew was in trucks, ready to go. “I guarantee you they are catnapping,” he said.
‘Can I pet your dog?’
Fire bosses now understand that rest and time away from the fireline are critical to maintaining the ability of crews to stay at work, and to mentally stay on the job. With firefighters facing months of racing from fire to fire, officials employ anything that can reduce the strain of an already-stressful job.
Ember, a cheerful yellow labrador, is one such tool. Richard Alamo is her handler, and as he strides through the sprawling camp he is greeted with “Can I pet your dog?,” exactly the reaction he’s looking for.
Alamo, a captain with the Sacramento Fire Department, employs Ember and her ever-swishing tail, as a therapy dog to allow firefighters to decompress by petting and playing with the dog, a small moment of normalcy in a frenetic place.
“They’re working long hours. They’re waiting to see some of the devastation,” he said. “And so when you come up they’re all smiles. We’re making a huge impact.
“She has a calming nature and she just loves people,” Alamo said, stroking the dog’s head. “It’s amazing to see her seek out certain people who might be stressed or having some type of emotion, and she’ll provide a little nudge, then position herself right in front of them so that they can pet her. Sometimes there’s no conversation that needs to be had. Just her simply going up to that person and saying, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ “
Those moments of decompression are now part of the state’s overall fire strategy. Tyler has said that attending to the mental health of his employees is a top priority, amid what some state officials have described as a crisis of PTSD and suicide.
The department has a team of peer support counselors who travel to fire stations and set up in trailers on large fires, with an open-door policy for anyone working the fire to talk.
The frequency and intensity of fires now leaves little down time, on a fire or after, because they might be quickly redeployed.
It’s a never-ending chess game.
“It has the potential to be a very long fire season,” Peterson said. “It does give us pause, yes it does.”
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