Local fire crews conserving during drought conditions, new recruits get less training

Thousands of acres are currently burning in several parts of California. While firefighters are busy trying to extinguish the flames, they’re also trying to conserve water when they can. On Monday, NewsChannel 5 met with a local fire department that said it’s trying a new technique new this year.

When firefighters get that initial call they don’t know exactly how large the fire will be or how much water they’ll need to use. Battalion Chief Scott Myhre said the drought is making the job even tougher for firefighters.

“Basically what is happening is fuel is being dried out so early that any bit of a spark or fire that starts a brush takes off extremely quickly and burns extremely hot and very difficult to extinguish,” Myhre said.

Firefighters are facing dry fuel with the raging Butte Fire in Northern California, which has charred thousands of acres.

“When we’re in a safety situation for life and property we use water and we don’t tell our folks not to in those circumstances,” Myhre said.

Water is a firefighter’s “go-to” tool and being asked to conserve means new recruits are getting less experience with some traditional practices. Myhre said because of the drought the trainees don’t do as many wet drills with these hoses to try to conserve water.

“Which does affect our people’s ability to have real-life training but we do have to do that to do our part to conserve water,” Myhre said

Before the drought, crews said about a 1,000 gallons of water would be used to fight a house fire. Now they can do that with 500 gallons of water.

“A lot more physical labor of moving things around instead of just soaking materials we’ll move them around and put a little less water on them so that we’re not being so irresponsible,” Myhre said

It may be more work but firefighters said at the end of the day every drop saved is water to use on the next fire.