700 California Wildfires: Why Don’t We Have Enough Firefighing Resources?
Almost three years ago, Americans watched in horror as this country failed to provide adequate disaster relief resources during Hurricane Katrina. Currently, the scenario is being repeated in California, where an estimated 600 to 900 lightning sparked wildfires are burning. Many of these fires began last Friday afternoon (6/20/08); many of these fires remain unmanned. As someone personally surrounded by over 80 fires in a 10 mile radius of my home, I am pissed, frightened, anxious, and depressed.
On Saturday, I called 911 twice to report seven fires, six of which only appeared on a map yesterday! I called CalFire, the United States Forest Service (two ranger districts), the Humboldt County Sheriff Department, the Trinity County Sheriff Department, and our local volunteer fire department. I wanted to know what road I could take out of our valley if I needed to escape the firestorm. The response, “Ma’am, there are fires everywhere. We don’t know where they are or what roads are open.” I felt trapped, and we began putting dozer lines around our meadow, hooking up more sprinklers, and connecting fire hoses to the pump in our pond.
Friends of ours in Mendocino were told by CDF, “We have so many fires, you are on your own.” YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN! Five days later, there has still not been any agency to help with their fire; however, the BLM showed up to tell them to stop using private bulldozers to put fire lines in around the blaze on public land. They didn’t listen and protected their homes on their own.
We’ve been through fire before, but never of this magnitude. There is no doubt that local agencies are doing the best they can with limited resources. The Firefighter Blog explains:
The State of California is in the midst of the worst wildfire crisis in modern state history. More than 900 wildland fires are burning, many unstaffed. Incident commanders are making do with skeleton crews in most cases.
Of course, the priority for resources has been homes and life, and I commend the job the firefighters are doing, but why did it take our governor three days to declare a state of emergency from the fires? Does he not work on the weekends during a natural disaster? Why do we have skeleton crews? The most apparent lack of support is air support. We are lucky if one plane or helicopter shows up for an hour to fight one fire out of 80 in our smoldering community.
The Bush administration has left this country’s infrastructure to deal with natural disasters in shambles. National Guard troops and resources are in Iraq, and local agencies are underfunded. Increased wildfires have been predicted as a result of global warming; this should not have hit us out of the blue. If we can’t handle natural disasters on our own, we need to ask other countries for help. We often send assistance to other countries during times of need. It’s time to swallow our patriotic pride and admit we can’t fight the magnitude of these fires on our own. We let immigrants earn citizenship by fighting in our wars; why not let them earn citizenship for fighting wildfires?
Locals are trying to make noise to get anyone’s attention: We are in DESPERATE need of help! We have been contacting our county board of supervisors, who have been trying their best to get us resources. We have called the governor, Boxer, Feinstein, Berg, etc. We receive compassionate responses to our pleas for help, but the answer is always the same: We don’t have any resources to send your way. Here is what one impassioned citizen wrote:
We appreciate your efforts in the past week to try and obtain the needed resources to fight the fires in Trinity County. However after five days, there are still few if any resources on any of the eighteen or so fires threatening our home and business, and the homes of our eight to ten other neighbors. All told there are about ten houses, one commercial building, our winery, numerous barns and outbuildings( probably about 25 ) and historic ranches that are being threatened. After we called 911 on Friday afternoon, a spotter plane flew over Friday night, but since then no planes or helicopters have worked on any of the eighteen fires near us…So far the weather has been ok so the fires have not spread too badly, but we need resources at some point to fight these fires, or they will eventually reach our homes and businesses, our lives that we have built over the past twenty years and longer. We are trying our best to be patient, but it is difficult. While we were watching the fires burn last night from our deck, we realized there is at least one that is not on the map and does not have a name…We are doing what we can to remain safe, keep our place green, build defensible barriers, and would like to remain here as long as we can to keep our place safe, especially since so far very little help appears to be on the way. Help is getting closer, which is a good start, but I wish it could get even closer. The fire camps are quite large, I hope they can spare some bodies out our way, and any air support would really help both the fires and our spirits. More resources are needed or the situation in Northern California could turn into another Hurricane Katrina type situation when the government took too long to take care of its citizens.
Local citizens have stepped up to the plate to keep each other informed and squelch wild rumors. What few firefighters have arrived have needed locals to help them find roads and locate fires on the map. Email has been utilized to keep the community informed; however, power was turned off to our town two days ago because of fire near the poles. Maps finally showed up yesterday at the store, and tomorrow there will be a community meeting. The information aspect of the fires is improving, as our local volunteer fire chief explained, “I don’t feel like a mushroom anymore, kept in the dark and fed s**t.” Despite local information efforts, websites reporting incident news are unreliable. This occurs every fire season, when the server for InciWeb can’t handle the demand. Firefighters and families rely on InciWeb for updated information, why can’t the government upgrade the server?
We are lucky the thunderstorms occurred early in fire season, when much of the foliage is still green. These fires are moving slowly, for the most part, which has been a blessing, as agencies scramble for very limited resources. The weather has mostly cooperated with cooler temperatures and light winds, but more thunderstorms are predicted for this weekend.
Image: Redding.com
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From my study of the fire maps,it appears that the wind has blown the fire north and away from you. We are praying for your family and others in the area. Now that the other fires are getting controlled, there ought to be more help headed your way.
I am in the Paradise area where we have lost homes twice in the last month. If the winds were blowing now like they were in the first Paradise fire, there would be nothing that firefighters could do to keep California from burning.
But, it appears that California is reaping what it has sown.
Actually the canyon winds are blowing it south, but that containment line is holding. The most fire growth has been to the north, since efforts are to contain the fire near structures to the south. There are a lot of spot fires across the river. We are still under mandatory evacuation. There is a public meeting tonight, so I hope to learn more. Good luck in Paradise. I hear they even evacuated the entire K-Mart store of merchandise there.
They evacuated the local hospital. But, they are reopening Friday. Hopefully more resources will now be sent your way. It appears as if all the fires in Trinity County are merging. The whole county seems to be on fire. Six Rivers does not provide a lot of information on their fires, at least from what I have seen on the net.
How did the meeting go? Have there been homes destroyed in the area? Is help on the way?
Rick, thanks for checking in. We had incident commanders from the Iron, Hell’s Half, and Lime complexes at the meeting. With more seasonal weather approaching, the picture does not look good, and these fires are growing together. The Lime Fire will burn all the way from Hyampom to Forest Glen. The Hell’s Half IC is so confident, he is giving away our resources (8 engines and all our helicopters yesterday). I understand they need to protect larger communities, but these resources are assigned to this fire, and this is being done amongst “boys in the sandbox” (their words, not mine). One home has been destroyed in my area (and Trinity Co.), which is really pretty amazing! George W. is flying over today, if you call that help. And crazily, our main road is now closed for four hours in the morning and afternoon for road construction. We are sharing one road now with the fire fighters that is not even good enough to be considered a detour road, but it is an “alternate route”. Crazy. I think they don’t want to have to pay for breaking the contract.
http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/04/02/ode-to-a-road/
This is a good site for updates:
http://gacc.nifc.gov/oncc/predictive/intelligence/situation/fireinfosummary.htm
It is more honest then the press releases, as far as painting a rosy picture.
Over and over at the meetings they complained about lack of resources, specifically requests for hot shot crews that have not been filled in 10 days. They can’t do the burnouts they want to, because they don’t have the hotshots and the National Guard aren’t experienced enough. Also, the Martin Mars costs $17,000 an hour!
Thanks for the update site. It is more accurate for sure. Here is what I found at another site:
West: On the western side of the fire, mop up activities continue with firefighters reporting minimal activity.
East: Burnouts will occur if weather conditions.
Approximately 200 firefighters were relocated to a spike camp in Hyampom, reducing travel times to and from work locations. Aircraft will operate as conditions allow. END
How are they going to operate aircraft if they have moved them all? Seems that all of the valuable timber on South Fork will be going up in smoke at the rate they are moving.
$17,000 an hour? Maybe that is Canadian dollars.
Seems like a real money maker. Send it back to Canada.
It is a miracle that more homes have not been destroyed. The winds have been kept in check to a great degree. Are you in danger from the Iron Complex? It looks to be headed to the South West.
Yes, our community is threatened by Hell’s Half, Iron, and Lime complexes. These complexes may burn together in places and are impacting burnout operations on one another. Yes, spike camp is set up, and I intend to go to their morning briefings. Too smokey to fly right now. Things are going to be changing here as we get to August. These slow moving fires are going to explode if not contained soon.
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