PL 5
Well, here we are again. With an unexpected lightning storm that rivals the great 2008 fire siege of Northern California, the National Preparedness Level has been raised to five. In the middle of a deadly pandemic, made more so by particulates in the air or the need to crowd into a shelter, we are running out of firefighting resources. Some are unavailable due to caution on the part of a sending unit, and some are unavailable due to COVID-19 quarantines. One helicopter pilot has died in a crash during water bucket operations on a fire near Fresno. On Tuesday, the same day PL5 was reached, Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency.
While Newsom attempted to put a brave face on the situation, it is apparent that the state is running out of firefighting resources. With rolling blackouts and a 130 degree temperature reading in Death Valley, the intersection of climate chaos and a global pandemic looks set to cause real problems.
Much hullabaloo was made going into this fire season about all fires being aggressively suppressed. As compared to what? In what universe were too many fires allowed to burn with ill effect? In a departure from 2008, when most of the lightning was in the mountains of Northern California, this year it occurred in the foothills on either side of the Central and San Joaquin Valleys, where some of America’s worst air quality can be found, even in the absence of fires. The real problem, in many forest ecosystems, is putting out all the fires when we can. Invariably, a small percentage of fires will escape containment under the most severe conditions, as we are experiencing now. Allowing some fires to burn and conducting prescribed fires under more moderate conditions could alleviate the severity and smoke emissions from those fires that do escape, but that tool was removed from the fire manager’s tool box this year, in yet another knee-jerk overreaction to perceived risk.
Stay tuned to the FUSEE website as we explore fires quietly doing good and not being suppressed in California. Also, we will keep you posted on COVID impacting firefighters, as we did with our early coverage of the shortage of California inmate crews. Now that we are at Planning Level 5, firefighters can be compelled to work even with known exposure to the virus, so long as they are asymptomatic. With the stress building and the season still early, particularly in California, immune systems will start to degrade. With one COVID case potentially taking an entire crew of twenty out of service, expect resources to grow increasingly scarce, especially hand crews. And to be sure, despite the sound and fury (as well as great cost) of the aircraft and machinery brought to bear on wildfires, nothing really happens without men and women swinging hand tools. Stay safe out there!