FIRE SERVICE ARTICLES
By ALLISON HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri July 6, 6:39 AM ET
A wildfire season that has already burned parts of Catalina Island, Los Angeles & Lake Tahoe, swaths of California 's flammable national forests are some days protected by nothing more than luck. On any given day, about 40 of 271 U.S. Forest Service engines remain in firehouses rather than on patrol, idled by a shortage of supervisors. Meanwhile, the combined effects of sustained drought, last winter's freeze & a searing heat wave has dramatically raised fire danger levels this season.
An exodus of highly trained mid & upper-level firefighters from the career ranks of the federal agency is at least partly to blame for the fact that 13% of the service's 3,600 full-time positions in CA are vacant. "When you start leaving holes in your organization so that on a given high-danger day you can't provide coverage you've set yourself up for trouble," said John Marker, a retired former Forest Service district ranger on the Sequoia National Forest . Nationally, fire planners from all five federal agencies that handle firefighting are dealing with the departure of a generation of top managers hired during a firefighting expansion in the late 1970s. That has left behind too few career firefighters qualified to run engines, oversee forests or command large fire operations. As forests from the Mexico border to Canada reassign engine crews, top-level teams working for other agencies are simply hiring recent retirees & coming out of retirement as emergency hires this season. "We haven't been able to fill out teams so we keep bringing back the old warhorses," said Paul Broyles, who heads the NV team.
CA has been hit harder than other states because the high cost of living has deterred recruits from moving here, & state & local agencies are siphoning federal managers with higher pay & better benefits. USFS officials have filled nearly 800 positions since last October but are still short about 470 people. "There are a lot of people lower down in the system who are 5 or 6 yrs away from being able to compete for leadership jobs," said Ed Hollenshead, regional director of fire & aviation management for the USFS. The hardest-hit areas include the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests, where only 60 to 70 percent of engines are being regularly staffed because there are too few qualified supervisors to go around, said Mike Dietrich, acting deputy director of fire & aviation for the USFS Region 5, which encompasses all of CA. Those forests border on heavily populated urban areas, potentially raising the risk to people living nearby. "It's going to take them longer to get to these fires," said Doug Campbell, a retired USFS fire planner who now trains various agencies on fire behavior. None of the big fires so far this season have gotten out of hand because of short staffing, and officials said they are confident CA has enough resources available to get through the next 6 months. With 1,600 seasonal hires, the USFS is fielding 5,200 firefighters this year. Chiefs on CA 18 national forests, which cover about 20% of the state, can call on their counterparts in other federal firefighting units or the CAL Fire, which has 8,400 people available this summer, said Ken McLean, deputy state director of fire protection.
CA robust mutual aid system also activates thousands of engines working for myriad municipal & co. departments in large fires. Despite the shortages of engine crews, the USFS teams of smokejumpers & hotshots are filled. Engine crews are being moved around the state as weather-related fire risk levels change, Hollenshead said. The region has also won an extra complement of 15 federal helicopters to beef up capacity for the first crucial hours of a blaze. Firefighting crews & equipment from other parts of the country are also being moved into CA & the rest of the West, said Tom Harbour , national director of fire & aviation for the USFS.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection: http://www.fire.ca.gov
U.S. Forest Service, Region 5: http://fs.fed.us/r5
