Copyright 2006 The Press Enterprise, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
By RICHARD BROOKS
The Press Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.)
Two winters of plentiful rain and snow, combined with favorable long-range forecasts, are prompting forestry officials to predict that the impending fire season will be no worse than normal.
"`Normal’ could (include) a big fire,” cautioned Bruce Risher, a U.S. Forest Service analyst. “But it’s not going to be like 2003,” when the Southland was ravaged by major blazes, including the 90,000-acre Old Fire that destroyed 940 homes in and below the San Bernardino Mountains.
A seven-year drought that helped kill millions of trees throughout the San Bernardino National Forest led to the firestorms of 2003.
Although only about a sixth of the dead trees have been removed from the forest, two consecutive wet winters have diminished the fire danger by ending the drought and reinvigorating the surviving trees and brush, officials say.
Now that the crisis apparently has passed, tighter budgets are causing federal officials to reduce the daily number of fire engines on duty, while state officials are maintaining the size of their fleet but are paring each crew by one firefighter in San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties.
“We’re back to our normal staffing of three people per engine,” said Interim Chief Tim Turner, who commands all California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection stations in San Bernardino County. “We feel like we’re adequately staffed - absent severe (windy) weather.”
In Southern California, the fire season usually begins in May and grows progressively more dangerous until the winter rain rejuvenates the grass and brush.
But abundant rain during the past two months, coupled with this month’s occasional morning fog and lingering clouds, will likely delay the onset of fire season until early June in the valleys and foothills and late June throughout the mountains of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Even the tinder-dry months of July and August may be relatively uneventful.
“If you don’t have extremely strong winds, you’re (usually) not going to have large fires,” said meteorologist Ron Hamilton, of the U.S. Forest Service.
The dry and blustery Santa Ana winds customarily are limited to September, October and — as the catastrophic 2003 fire season demonstrated — sometimes November.
FEWER FEDERAL CREWS
The biggest change in fire preparedness this year — at least temporarily — is that the U.S. Forest Service isn’t hiring as many seasonal firefighters as last year in Southern California, so some fire engines won’t be manned seven days per week.
In the San Bernardino National Forest, 40 fewer seasonal firefighters are being hired, said Fire Chief Mike Dietrich.
Unlike last season, when all 25 of the forest’s fire engines were manned seven days per week, Dietrich said that the staffing reduction will mean that only 21 or 22 fire engines will be manned on weekends, and between 18 and 16 on most weekdays.
“We will never go below 12,” he said.
But the cuts may be only temporary. Negotiators for a forestry employees’ labor union is visiting Capitol Hill to lobby for additional funding, said Dan Duefrene, regional vice president of the National Federal of Federal Employees Forest Service Council.
Even if the effort is unsuccessful, the Forest Service has emergency funds available.
“I’m comfortable with the current staffing, considering (how early it is in) the fire season,” said Jean Wade Evans, who has been the forest’s head supervisor since January. “We’re going to continuously monitor the conditions and . . . if we have to staff up with the severity funding, that’s what we’ll do.”
NO GUARANTEES
But Evans’ predecessor is concerned by the cutbacks, saying that even a last-minute infusion of money will be too late if prospective seasonal firefighters have already found other jobs.
“If they don’t hire those 40 firefighters (now) . . . they’re gone for the fire season,” said Gene Zimmerman, who retired in January after 14 years as the forest’s supervisor. “And without those 40, you can’t rotate (existing crews as easily) to give them rest.”
Computer models have shown that 25 engines, manned seven days per week, is the most efficient and cost-effective number for extinguishing wildfires before they grow dangerously and expensively large, Zimmerman said.
But he stopped short of predicting disaster if the number remains is reduced. The main result maybe that fewer engines will be sent on mutual-aid assignments to help fight fires outside the local forests or even beyond California, officials say.
And if the fire season is more fierce than expected, off-duty crews can be brought back to work on an overtime basis -which Zimmerman said usually can be done within hours.
“I don’t think the sky is falling,” he said. “But it does mean that, across California, there are less firefighting resources on every forest.
“I think we’re going to have to decide whether the sky is falling in retrospect - seeing how the fire season plays out.”