With Southern California still in the thick of an exceptionally brutal winter fire season, lawmakers are calling for the state’s largest firefighting agency to extend the bulk of its staffing and operations year-round, instead of employing a seasonal schedule.
A bipartisan group of California lawmakers this week announced legislation that would transition about 3,000 seasonal firefighters who work for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to year-round employees. The legislation would also ensure fire engines, helicopters and vegetation management crews are working every month of the year.
“More aggressive fires, and an unrelenting year-round wildfire season, demands more aggressive responses,” Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire, a Sonoma County Democrat, said in a statement. “Wildfires don’t take three months off. … This investment will make communities more wildfire safe and greatly improve fire and emergency response in every corner of California.”
The transition to full-time staffing would cost the state an estimated $175 million each year, according to McGuire’s office. It wasn’t immediately clear where those dollars would come from.
Cal Fire currently lays off some of its lowest ranking firefighters — yet the largest proportion of its workforce — during the winter after they work for nine months, though they can be called back during emergencies. Cal Fire firefighters typically work April to December.
But in recent years, Cal Fire officials have continued to warn that California no longer has a fire season but instead has a year-round threat as human-caused climate change worsens, which has been found to intensify fires and made them more explosive. UC Irvine researchers found that climate change and increased development has lengthened the historical fire season.
“January has highlighted a new reality of climate change, one that demands we fully prepare for year-round, climate-driven disasters, making legislation for increased staffing levels essential,” Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) said in a statement. “Firefighters are experiencing these staffing shortages firsthand and need additional personnel to ensure they can respond effectively to disasters wherever they occur.”
The bill has not yet been formally introduced, but McGuire said it will be referred to as the Fight for Firefighters Act. Lawmakers announced the effort just weeks after two devastating fires razed parts of Los Angeles County in January — typically one of the slowest months for fires. Jesse Torres, a Cal Fire spokesperson, said the agency was forced to call back in firefighters who’d been laid off for January, February and March to respond to the major conflagrations.
We “are getting more devastating fires in months we never expected,” Torres said. He said when he first started at Cal Fire in the late 1990s, he worked a seasonal shift from June to November. Now, seasonal fire crew staffing takes place from April through December, and is still not long enough, he said.
Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar bill, not because he didn’t agree with the objective, but because he said the state was already planning to hire 2,000 new full-time firefighters who would work a new, shorter workweek.
But lawmakers say Cal Fire’s crews deserve steady work that will not only improve the state’s preparedness for fire, but also improve the firefighters’ mental health and working conditions. A CalMatters investigation in 2022 uncovered a worsening mental health crisis among the agency’s firefighters, who said they struggled to recover from grueling shifts and trauma from the front lines, with little assistance.
“From battling wildfires to responding to emergency calls, we owe the brave men and women of Cal Fire our highest debt of gratitude,” Sen. Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-San Diego) said in a statement. “We have much more work to do, but this bill is a critical first step to giving our firefighters the job stability and support they need and deserve.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
