CalFire braces for active fire season in light of drought

CalFire managers are beefing up staff and getting ready for an intense fire season across California. Last fall, the King fire in the Sierra Nevada mountains east of Sacramento destroyed 80 structures and burned more than 97-thousand acres. this year, fire crews expect to be busy.

“What’s really important to note though is that even though the potential is there because of the drought, conditions are dry, they are ripe for wildfires.” Says Daniel Berlant with CalFire. “95 percent of the fires we respond to are caused by the activity of people. That means almost every single fire is preventable. So we are really trying to educate people that, yeah the drought is affecting the grass and the vegetation and it’s leading to more fires, but we as Californians and visitors to California have the biggest responsibility, and the biggest role in preventing them.”

Last fall’s Applegate fire in Placer County destroyed 6 homes and fire crews are reminding homeowners to make sure there is 100 feet of defensible space around their homes. The defensible spaces also provides for firefighter safety when protecting homes during a wild land fire.

“Just last week, we responded to nearly 150 wildfires,” say Berlant. “That’s an outrageous number for this early into the year, so we’ve already been staffing up, increasing our seasonal staffing to meet what it’s going to be, obviously it’s going to be a very early fire season.”

2015 has already been troublesome says Berlant, “We had a 7,000 acre fire in February in the eastern Sierras that destroyed dozens of homes. Again, that’s fire activity that we would typically see in the peak of summer, or the end of fall. Not something that we would see in the winter or in February where the elevation is 6,000 to 7,000 feet.”