Pacific Gas and Electric reached an agreement Monday with six Northern California Counties to avoid criminal charges for the company’s role in igniting two very large destructive wildfires, the 2021 Dixie Fire and the 2019 Kincade Fire. The settlement means the district attorneys in the six counties will not pursue criminal charges against the company, or if they have already been filed, will be dismissed.
The Dixie Fire burned on the Plumas National Forest, Lassen National Forest, Lassen Volcanic National Park, and across five counties: Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama. The Kincade Fire was in Sonoma County.
The agreements with the counties does not prevent the US Attorney from filing criminal charges for the Dixie Fire. Nor does it prevent civil litigation from property owners. The Sacramento Bee reported that PG&E said it expects liabilities from the Kincade Fire to reach $800 million and the Dixie Fire to be $1.15 billion.
The Dixie and Kincade Fires, caused by PG&E power lines, burned 963,000 and 77,758 acres respectively.
In the settlement PG&E agreed to pay $55 million over a five year period. About $35 million will go to local organizations, volunteer fire departments, local schools, Rotary Clubs, Chambers of Commerce, fire safe councils, and other non-profits. The company will pay a $7.5 million civil penalty to Sonoma County related to the Kincade Fire and a $1 million civil penalty to each of the five North Valley counties related to the Dixie Fire. PG&E said they will not seek recovery of these costs from customers.
Details of some of the payments, according to PG&E, include:
Wildfire Safety
Local Safety Workforce: Adding 80-100 new PG&E jobs based in Sonoma County, as well as 80-100 more positions collectively across Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties. These new positions will increase PG&E’s local expertise and presence focused on completing critical safety work in these communities.
Local Inspection and Work Commitments: Executing specific safety work and inspections in the six counties including commitments to carry out vegetation management and equipment inspections, which will be reviewed and verified by the independent monitor.
Local Community College Partnerships
Fire Technology Training Program: Committing to work collaboratively with Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) on efforts to expand and enhance the College’s Fire Technology Program of the Public Safety Training Center, including providing funding and sharing PG&E wildfire safety know-how and learnings. The company also will provide funding to campuses in the six counties which, at the discretion of the colleges, can be used for site acquisition and development, equipment purchases, and developing and implementing fire technology program curriculum.
Vegetation Management Training Program: Providing funding and assisting in the creation of new utility vegetation management training programs at SRJC and several campuses across the North Valley. These programs will be modeled after coursework that debuted at Butte College in 2020.
Direct Payment Program to Accelerate Community Recovery
PG&E will launch a new Direct Payments for Community Recovery program with an online tool where individuals whose homes were destroyed by the Dixie Fire can submit claims for expedited review, approval and payment. PG&E will verify the claims and make offers based on an objective, predetermined calculation. Claimants who accept the offers will receive payment, typically within 30 days of accepting an offer and within 75 days of first submitting a complete claim. PG&E has also agreed to provide in-person and telephone customer support centers to navigate this new program.
Firefighters on the Dixie Fire, Strike Team 9163G. CAL FIRE photo.
The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag Warnings in 9 states April 9, 2022.
The map represents the forecasts from multiple National Weather System offices at 7:50 a.m. MT April 9, 2022. The predictions are subject to change throughout the day.
The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag Warnings in areas of 11 states April 6, 2022 for winds, depending on the location, gusting at 35 to 60 mph and relative humidity in the single digits, teens, or twenties. In addition, most of the Northern Plains is under a High Wind Warning.
Red Flag Warnings, April 6, 2022. The text in the map shows the various warnings for Southern Nebraska.
Heat and Wind Advisories are in effect for areas near the Southern California coast.
Southern California heat and wind advisories near the coast, April 6, 2022. A Red Flag Warning is in effect for the area where California, Nevada, and Arizona meet along the Colorado River. NWS.
The maps represent the forecasts from multiple National Weather System offices at 11:50 a.m. CT April 6, 2022. The predictions are subject to change throughout the day.
Approximately 7.1 million acres of land administered by the Interior Department have been identified as having a very high or high likelihood of exposure to wildfires
Fire activity on the Horse Pasture Fire April 8, 2021 as islands of unburned fuel within the perimeter continue to burn. Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. NPS photo.
The Department of the Interior (DOI) has released a five-year plan to address wildfire risk on DOI protected land. It will help to prepare communities and ecosystems against the threat of wildfire by making investments in forest restoration, hazardous fuels management, and post-wildfire restoration. Much of it will be funded by Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) which provides $1.5 billion for the DOI’s Wildland Fire Management Program
Today, the Department released a roadmap for achieving these objectives in coordination with federal, non-federal, and Tribal partners. The roadmap follows the release in January of the U.S. Forest Service 10-Year Wildfire Crisis Strategy. Taken together, these plans outline the monitoring, maintenance, and treatment strategy the agencies will use to address wildfire risk, better serve communities, and improve conditions on all types of lands where wildfires can occur.
“Wildland fire management simply isn’t possible without the interagency, all-hands approach made possible by multilevel partnerships across the country,” said Office of Wildland Fire Director Jeff Rupert.
The overall strategy identified by the Interior and Agriculture Departments builds on the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy’s vision of safely and effectively extinguishing fire, when needed; using fire where allowable; managing natural resources; and, as a nation, living with wildland fire.
Today Director Rupert and personnel from the Forest Service testified before the House Natural Resources Committee on their planned work to address wildland fire.
In the hearing today, Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico referred to the Forest Service’s 10-year strategy released in January. “I am concerned that the recently announced 10-year strategy to combat the wildfire crisis will fall short because not only are the tools not in place to implement this strategy, but the Forest Service is also only relying on only 5 years of funding to execute a 10-year plan. This is especially concerning considering yesterday’s release of the Department of the Interior’s wildfire strategy which is only 5 years.”
Rep. Herrell asked why the 10-year strategy included no references to how it will be implemented. Jaelith Hall-Rivera, USFS Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry, said that it was a timing issue, in that the strategy was being prepared while the legislation was being considered.
Later in the hearing, Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona asked in regards to the additional funding and new initiatives outlined in the Infrastructure legislation, “Does the Forest Service have adequate staff capacity to fill the new dollars they will be responsible with implementing, and how does the Forest Service intend to address staffing capacities with new hiring?”
After Ms. Hall-Rivera and Brian Ferebee, Chief Executive of Intergovernmental Relations for the Forest Service glanced at each other, Mr. Ferebee turned on his microphone and basically said they were looking at the issue.
The DOI’s 5-year plan has a page and a half, Section III Planning, devoted to changes that will help to enable the execution of the additional workload. Those include:
Creating a team to deal with NEPA and other statutory review compliance;
Exploring opportunities to leverage partnerships and to utilize existing authorities to facilitate hazardous fuel treatments, such as Good Neighbor Authority.
Increase contracting and administration capacity so that programs have the support needed to carry out critical wildland fire management work. This will support efforts to hire additional wildland firefighters that are needed for wildfire response and to increase the pace and scale of hazardous fuel treatment efforts, along with the contracting that is needed for other critical fuel and restoration activities.
BIL investments will also allow DOI to expand staffing for professional positions that support science-based management decisions.
Continuing efforts started in 2021 to convert seasonal wildland firefighters to permanent full-time status will facilitate DOI efforts to respond to wildfires year-round and undertake hazardous fuel projects during periods of low wildfire activity.
The BIL provides funding to expand opportunities for training for staff, non-Federal wildland firefighters, and Native village fire crews to increase the pace and scale of fuel management treatments.
The USDA Forest Service’s 10-Year Wildfire Crisis Strategy focuses on treatment of up to 20 million acres of National Forest System lands, while Interior’s Five-Year Plan emphasizes fire-prone Interior and Tribal lands, including rangelands and other vegetative ecosystems that pose serious fire risks. Approximately 7.1 million acres of land administered by the Interior Department have been identified as having a very high or high likelihood of exposure to wildfires.
Personnel from the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior testified Tuesday before a Congressional Committee
Witnesses in the hearing before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, April 5, 2022. L to R: Brian Ferebee (FS), Jaelith Hall-Rivera (FS), Jeff Rupert (Dept. of Interior).
The standard line from the US Forest Service about the number of wildland firefighters in the agency has been 10,000 wildland firefighters nationwide, but in recent years they have been unable to fill all of their positions due to difficulties in recruitment and retention. The San Francisco Chronicle (subscription) reported that in 2021 the number stationed in California dropped from 5,000 in 2019 to 3,956, more than a 20 percent decline.
In a hearing today before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, the Forest Service said they believe they are turning that problem around.
Representative Katie Porter from California asked how many firefighters does the agency need to have. Jaelith Hall-Rivera, USFS Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry said their goal this year is 11,300. That would be 13 percent more than the maximum they have had in recent memory.
When Rep. Porter asked how many they have now, Ms. Hall-Rivera said she didn’t know because they are still hiring.
“We just completed an additional fire hire event in California at the end of March and those numbers are still coming in,” Ms. Hall-Rivera said. “I do think we are on pace [to meet that goal]. By all accounts that hiring event went very well. Importantly what we are seeing is a very high acceptance rate in our permanent and seasonal permanent firefighting positions, which is what we want. We want to be able to convert this workforce to have more or a larger proportion of it to be permanent and a smaller proportion of it be temporary… We think that we will be at the capacity we need at the Forest Service this year.”
“That’s really great to hear,” Rep. Porter said, “because as you know last year according to the National Federation of Federal Employees, about 30 percent of the federal hotshot crews that worked on the front lines of wildfires in California were understaffed. Last year the Forest Service had 60 fire engines in California alone that were idled because of understaffing. I’m very heartened to hear a concrete number, a concrete goal, for what full staffing looks like.”
Rep. Porter asked how much it costs to bring in firefighters from other fire departments when the Forest Service does not have adequate staffing for fire suppression. Ms. Hall-Rivera said she did not have those numbers, but would get back to the Representative. Firefighters from CAL FIRE and municipal fire departments make two to three times what federal wildland firefighters make and they get paid 24 hours a day, “portal to portal”, for weeks on large fires until they are back in their own station. Federal firefighters are usually limited to 16 hours a day, and are forced to take a 30 minute lunch break even when they are on the steep slope of a God-forsaken ridge breathing smoke miles from the nearest road.
Earlier Ms. Hall-Rivera said the Forest Service has lost 40 percent of their non-fire workforce. This reduction in personnel, some of whom were qualified to be assigned to a fire in addition to their regular duties, can increase the difficulty of staffing fires and other incidents.
Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission
Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico asked when members would be appointed to the new Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, which was required by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, H.R.3684, signed by the President on November 15, 2021. The law required that the appointments were to be made by January 14, 2022. Their initial meeting was to be held no later than February 13, 2022.
Ms. Hall-Rivera said the announcement for applications closed last Friday after receiving more than 500 responses. The members will be selected “in a month or two,” she said.
Tamarack Fire and aggressive initial attack
Representative Tom McClintock of California, brought up the subject of the Tamarack Fire in California which was monitored but not suppressed for 13 days while it was very small. It burned at least 15 structures and more than 67,000 acres as it ran from California into Nevada jumping Highway 395 and prompting the evacuation of 2,000 people.
“This is insane,” Rep. McCLintock said, referring to the management of the fire. “Please tell me that you are dropping that policy and you will be vigorously attacking fires on their initial discovery rather than waiting for them to become one of these massive conflagrations.”
“We put out 98 percent of fires on initial attack,” Ms. Hall-Rivera said. “The Tamarack Fire is one of those 2 percent that we were not able to do that because we were resource-limited in the country as a whole.”
“You deliberately sat on it,” Rep. McClintock said. “Can you assure me that henceforth upon discovery of a fire you will order an aggressive initial attack?”
“Yes, Congressman, that is what we do,” said Hall-Rivera.
Goals for fuel treatment
“While the Forest Service’s budget has more than doubled since 2014, the amount of hazardous fuels treatment has remained frustratingly stagnant, only addressing roughly two percent of their needs annually,” said Rep. Herrell. “I am concerned that the recently announced 10-year strategy to combat the wildfire crisis will fall short because not only are the tools not in place to implement this strategy, but the Forest Service is also only relying on only 5 years of funding to execute a 10-year plan. This is especially concerning considering yesterday’s release of the Department of the Interior’s wildfire strategy which is only 5 years.”
“The Infrastructure law was a significant step in the right direction in terms of wildland firefighter compensation, and once again I thank you for your work on that,” Ms. Hall-Rivera replied. “But we need to continue to work together to find a permanent solution to increasing our wildland firefighters’ pay and making other system changes that insure that we can continue to support our firefighters and insure that this is a career that others will pursue in the future.”
Rep. Herrell asked why the 10-year strategy included no references to how it will be implemented. Ms. Hall-Rivera said that it was a timing issue, in that the strategy was being prepared while the legislation was being considered.
Staffing for the additional fuel management workload
Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona asked in regards to the additional funding and new initiatives outlined in the Infrastructure legislation, “Does the Forest Service have adequate staff capacity to fill the new dollars they will be responsible with implementing, and how does the Forest Service intend to address staffing capacities with new hiring?”
After Ms. Hall-Rivera and Brian Ferebee, Chief Executive of Intergovernmental Relations for the Forest Service, glanced at each other, Mr. Ferebee turned on his microphone and basically said they were looking at the issue.
My take:
I did not summarize every topic that came up in the hearing, but attempted to capture the most significant ones related to wildland fire. After reading through the above, I noticed a trend: PLANNING, and a lack thereof.
Failure to meet the deadlines required for the establishing the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission.
Planning to rely on only 5 years of funding to execute a 10-year plan for fuel management.
The 10-year strategy included no references to how it will be implemented. “The strategy was being prepared while the legislation was being considered.”
The Forest Service does not know if they have enough staffing to accomplish the new initiatives outlined in the Infrastructure legislation.
It reminds me of the effort by Congress to transfer seven C-130 aircraft to the Forest Service to be converted to air tankers.
On December 27, 2013, President Obama signed the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act which directed the Coast Guard to transfer seven HC-130H aircraft to the U.S. Forest Service. The legislation also supplied $130 million for the Air Force to perform needed maintenance on the aircraft and to convert them into air tankers.
About 522 days later, on June 1, 2015 the FS distributed internally a “Briefing Paper” that revealed the agency was not prepared to manage a long term safety oversight program for this government owned/contractor operated venture (GO/CO). On that date the the FS had no detailed operating plan and had not hired or appointed any long-term, full-time safety personnel. The document also stated that “the military model for a squadron of seven HC-130H aircraft is to have TWO [sic] full time safety officers assigned.”
“The time frame to create one or more new positions to provide aviation safety oversight duties”, the Briefing Paper said, “would likely be lengthy and not meet Agency HC-130H requirements in time for the 2015 fire season.”
The FS did not use the 522 days to plan for the absorption of the aircraft into the fleet.
They came to a conclusion, according to the Briefing Paper:
This is a new program for the Forest Service, one that we have never managed before (We don’t know what we don’t know).
Eventually, more than four years after the transfer and tens of millions had likely been spent on the refurbishment of the seven aircraft, the Forest Service decided they did not want the air tankers. Congress passed additional legislation to give the seven HC-130Hs to the state of California instead.
100-year records were set in areas of Northern California, Southern Oregon, Central Idaho, and Northern Nevada
Precipitation from January through March in the 11 Western states was below normal in many locations, but record driest amounts were recorded in areas of Northern California, Southern Oregon, Central Idaho, Northern Nevada, and scattered sections of Montana, Colorado, and Utah. This is based on more than 100 years of data from the WestWide Drought Tracker at the University of Idaho.
The dry weather is already affecting live fuel moisture of the brush in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco. On April 1 it was near the lowest ever measured on that date, about 30 percent below average.
Live fuel moisture, Santa Cruz Mountains, California. San José State University.
Of course there is a temptation to conclude that extremely dry soils and vegetation in April will lead to more acres burned than average, but the reality is that the weather in the summer has veto power. If conditions during the peak of the western wildfire season are cooler, wetter, more humid, and less windy than typical, it will not necessarily be a busier than average fire season.
However (there is always a “however”) if this dry trend continues through June, and if the weather in the following three months is close to normal, the effects of the current shortages of wildland firefighters are going to be even more noticeable and far-reaching than we saw during the last two years.
And the three-month forecast for much of the West predicts below normal precipitation.
NWS, Climate Prediction Center
In Northern California the snowpack on April 1 was 28 percent of normal for the date; statewide it was 38 percent.
