Is California Ready For This Year's Wildfires? Governor Gavin Newsom Says Yes

By Ria Roebuck Joseph | The Center Square contributor, The Center Square California

May 5, 2023

(The Center Square) - “Amid intensifying climate impacts, California and much of the West are experiencing longer and more destructive wildfire seasons. With our state on the frontlines of this existential threat, my Administration is taking unprecedented action to make our communities more resilient to wildfire and improve forest health.

Over the past four years, we’ve advanced historic investments to step up forest management and other projects that decrease catastrophic wildfire risk, fund robust emergency response efforts, and purchase state-of-the-art firefighting equipment. Thanks in part to these efforts, California last year saw an 85% reduction in acres burned compared to the previous year, a 75% reduction in structures damaged or destroyed, and the first night-flying firefighting mission,” the governor’s proclamation for Fire Preparedness Week said in part.

So far, the state has set aside $2.7 billion for forest management and management personnel with an additional $671.4 million in 2022-23 to add 1,265 new positions and expand to 37 fire crews, fund fire-fighting air operations and add supplemental relief for CAL FIRE.

In preparation for this year’s fire season, Newsom has deployed across the state, 18 helicopters and 6 fixed-wing aircraft hired exclusively for fire missions and to allow for a quicker response. These aircraft are equipped with infrared for night operations enabling incident commanders to monitor forest fires at all times.

A 20-year strategy was employed in 2020 by Newsom to restore forest health and boost wildfire resilience to improve 1 million acres of wildlands and forest through 2025.

Additionally, the governor promotes home hardening and creating defensible space around residences as the individual responsibility of Californians.

While these measures show a lot of preparation and readiness for the fire season, the Sierra Club suggests that California needs more prescribed burns as an effective way to prevent out-of-control wildfires.

Scott Rodd, investigative reporter at KPBS News and author of several Capradio articles on forest fires gone awry, stated in an NPR interview “...fire experts I spoke to say …the state needs to do close to a million acres of fire mitigation every year. And we're nowhere near that right now.”

The Sierra Club reports in November of last year that former governor Jerry Brown set a plan in May 2018 to burn 500,000 acres of wildlands each year by 2023 but in March 2022 “the state lowered that target to 400,000 acres per year by 2025, possibly because the actual acres burned each year were closer to a quarter of the new goal.”

The governor’s statement released on May 3, for Wildfire Preparedness Week said “CAL FIRE treated approximately 110,925 acres across more than 600 projects last fiscal year in preparation for wildfire season, exceeding the state’s goal of treating 100,000 acres by 2025.” This is well under the 500,000-acre target set by Brown and approximately 1/10 of the recommended one-million-acre controlled burn.

Controlled burns as a means of preventing wildfires apparently are still not a priority in a state that has seen 7,534,403 acres burned last year.

A report on the Grizzly Flats Fire of 2021 show that despite a fire mitigation plan, the US Forest Service was unable to complete the plan, “... a slew of hurdles stood in the way of the project’s completion: limited funding, pushback from environmentalists and fewer opportunities to complete essential prescribed burns due to staff shortages and climate change.”

The governor warned that wildfires are still a threat to California even though the state has had record breaking rainfall earlier this year.

“Having a wet year doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods when it comes to wildfires. Be aware and stay prepared,” the governor advised.

The focus of the work of The Center Square California is state and local-level government and economic reporting that approaches stories with a taxpayer sensibility.