About 3,000 seasonal firefighters with Cal Fire could soon work year-round as climate change fuels more intense wildfires in California. The cost? At least $175 million annually.
That proposal is one of 13 plans that Democrats in the state Senate announced Tuesday to prevent and respond to destructive wildfires and a slew of problems they cause, from California’s ongoing home insurance crisis to burned schools and looting. Hundreds of billions of dollars of damage were estimated in the Southern California fire storm last month alone, in which 29 deaths were confirmed.
“I think we’re living in a time when folks are tired of talk,” Senate President Mike McGuire told reporters last week. “This is the year of action.”
Lawmakers haven’t yet released details on most of the proposed bills.
The bill to transition thousands of seasonal state firefighters to year-round work has bipartisan support, with Republican Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones as a cosponsor. But Jones’ office said Republicans were blindsided by the rest of the package and would need time to evaluate the rest of the proposed legislation.
“We weren’t involved in that at all,” said Jones’ spokeswoman Nina Krishel.
Lawmakers in January already passed a $2.5 billion package to fund wildfire recovery in the Los Angeles region, which Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly signed. The bulk of the spending is intended for the state’s disaster response efforts, including evacuations, sheltering survivors and removing toxic waste from scorched properties.
The broader wildfire package announced last week includes stiffer penalties for those who loot burned-out homes; property tax relief for fire victims; new landscaping requirements to reduce fire risk around buildings; and policies to simplify the thicket of rules and regulations that slow down home rebuilding after wildfires.
Bay Area Democrats are among the lawmakers sponsoring legislation in the new package.
A bill introduced by Sen. Josh Becker of San Mateo and Sen. John Laird of Santa Cruz, both Democrats, would require the state fire marshal to write a report every three years that analyzes the fire prevention efforts of different governments, private property owners and utilities.
The idea? To better track the billions of dollars spent on fire prevention and response across governments and private companies in California, and determine what initiatives are effective, the senators said in a news release.
Sen. Dave Cortese, a Santa Clara County Democrat, said he wants to learn if homeowners are receiving insurance discounts for taking steps to make their properties more fire resistant, which the state’s insurance commissioner has tried to encourage. To that effect, he’s sponsoring a bill to create an “insurance community hardening commission” that would set statewide standards and track such efforts.
Cortese is also pushing a plan — in tandem with state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara — to create California’s own public wildfire “catastrophe model.”
Private insurance companies use computer modeling to estimate natural disaster damages and financial obligations to customers. With a public model, lawmakers would have a benchmark to compare with the insurance industry and an opportunity to challenge its assessments, Cortese said.
The year-round firefighter bill affects about 3,000 firefighters who battle blazes for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, and currently can work no more than nine months per year. That’s about a quarter of the 12,000 staff employed by the agency.
Historically, destructive blazes aren’t common during the late fall and winter in California. But last month’s Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles County and other massive blazes that have erupted in late fall, including the Camp fire in Butte County and Woolsey fire in Ventura County in November 2018 and the Thomas fire in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in December 2017, have shifted understanding of the risk. Scientists, insurers and others say human-caused climate change is intensifying fire risk.
Statewide, fire season now stretches year-round, said Tim Edwards, president of the firefighters’ union Cal Fire Local 2881.
“Even if it’s not burning in Northern California, it’s burning in Southern California,” he said. “The fires aren’t stopping. And we still don’t have the resources.”
Edwards said the union “100 percent” supports the bill to transition seasonal employees to full-time status. That’s partly because seasonal firefighters lose their state health care coverage for three or four months each year and have to pay out-of-pocket at that time, he said.
Bigger picture, Edwards said it’s critical for the state to have an adequate fire-fighting force. Although seasonal firefighters are laid off and re-hired annually, California keeps 66 of its 356 fire engines staffed at all times, according to Edwards. When they’re not on the front lines of destructive wildfires, those firefighters manage fire-prone vegetation and respond to floods. Hundreds of Cal Fire engines were mobilized this week as communities across California braced for possible flooding.
The proposal comes on the heels of significant expansion of Cal Fire’s forces in recent years. According to a spokesperson for Newsom, Cal Fire’s ranks have swelled from under 6,000 positions in 2018 to more than 10,700. And the governor plans to hire 2,400 more firefighters in the next five years, the spokesperson, Daniel Villasenor, wrote in an email.
Newsom cited those goals last year when he vetoed a similar bill that would have extended the employment period of seasonal firefighters. The bill was “unnecessary,” Newsom wrote in a signing statement, because of the hiring target and a new, shorter workweek that was established for firefighters.
It’s unclear if Newsom would sign this year’s proposal. Villasenor said the governor’s office doesn’t comment on pending legislation. McGuire said last week that he plans to speed up the legislative process to get the bill on Newsom’s desk within the next two months.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
