Wildfire Today

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Wildfire Today

Tag: California

CAL FIRE proposes to close 20 fire stations

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

Governor SchwarzeneggerThe California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which now prefers being called CAL FIRE, may have to close 20 fire stations due to a $50 million budget cut for the agency being ordered by the Governator. To help solve the state’s budget woes, Governor Schwarzenegger is also pushing a 1.25% surcharge on all residential and commercial insurance premiums.

More information from the Auburn Journal:

Proposed state budget cuts could close 20 Cal Fire stations statewide including Auburn’s Bowman station.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked Cal Fire to cut more than $52 million from its budget, which amounts to about 10 percent of its general fund.

“To do that we are going to have to close a number of our facilities and reduce a number of our positions,” said Daniel Berlant, department information officer for Cal Fire.

He said the positions cut would not be in fire protection but in resource management and at the State Fire Marshal’s office.

He said Auburn’s Cal Fire station is on a list of stations targets for proposed closure.

“There are other stations (in the Auburn area) that can respond in a timely manner if there were to be a wildfire,” Berlant said.

He said if the Auburn station were to close employees would be redistributed to other locations.

“No current employees would lose their jobs,” Berlant said.

The governor has also proposed a wildland firefighting initiative within the budget that would recommend a surcharge to property owners statewide, which would pay for all facilities to remain open, Berlant said.

A 1.25 percent surcharge on residential and commercial insurance, like homeowners insurance, could bring in as much as $120 million to the state fire agency.

“It would increase our funding and we could increase our staffing to respond to wildland fires before they become infernos like the San Diego fires of last October,” Berlant said.

Teenagers arrested for starting fire near Julian, CA

Author BillPosted on Categories WildfireTags

From the San Diego Union:

JULIAN – Two Julian teenagers, accused of starting the 850-acre Angel fire that destroyed one house and a large part of an Episcopal church retreat, will appear in court later this month for a preliminary hearing on felony charges of recklessly starting a fire.

If convicted, Francisco Javier Abarca, 19, and Mario J.W. DeLuca, 18, both of Julian, could also be held liable for the $3 million cost of fighting the September fire, officials say.

The blaze, caused by an illegal campfire, forced the evacuation of hundreds in the mountain town on Sept. 15. Seventeen buildings were destroyed at Camp Stevens, which was purchased in 1952 jointly by the Episcopal Dioceses of Los Angeles and San Diego.

Abarca and DeLuca are charged with a form of arson that does not require prosecutors to prove they intended to burn forest or buildings. If convicted, the teens face a maximum of three years in prison.

The arrests of Abarca and DeLuca in January were not publicized by authorities.

 

Redding Smokejumpers Mistaken for Invaders

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

SmokejumpersShortly after 9/11, the Redding, California Smokejumpers, using a location for the first time for practice jumps, were mistaken for an invading army by a local woman who considered getting a rifle.

From the Redding Record Searchlinght:

“Smokejumpers preparing for the coming fire season could be dropping into the Swasey Drive Recreation Area as early as next week.

The U.S. Forest Service’s Region 5 Smokejumpers, whose base is in Redding, will be using parts of the 1,200-acre area managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for training through the summer, said Bob Bente, the smokejumpers’ training foreman.

The spot west of town will be one of five around the north state used for training.

“It’s a new area,” he said.

Terrain in the recreation area, which is popular among mountain bikers and hikers, is similar to what smokejumpers — firefighters who get to backcountry blazes by parachute — might encounter on calls, said Francis Berg, assistant field manager in the BLM’s Redding office.

“Yet it’s close to town so they can get out there pretty quickly,” he said.

Bente said he wanted to give the public a head’s up that the chutists will be coming down. The parachutes should be visible from Placer Road near Swasey Drive, with the first jumps possibly Tuesday or Wednesday, he said.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the smokejumpers used a new jump spot south of town, he said. The sight of people parachuting from a plane caused a stir among nearby residents, including one woman who thought it could be an invasion.

“She actually contemplated getting a rifle,” Bente said.”

Esperanza Fire: One Trial or Six?

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

The 5-person crew of Engine 57 from the San Bernardino National Forest was killed while trying to protect a house during the Esperanza Fire in Southern California on October 26, 2006.

From the Press-Enterprise :

“Raymond Lee Oyler, charged with murder and arson in the deaths of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters, wants the 45 charges against him divided into six separate trials.“Very weak charges have been joined with particularly strong ones,” Mark R. McDonald, Oyler’s attorney, argues in the motion filed Friday.

The defense attorney claims putting all the charges in one trial, especially when some carry a death penalty, “will substantially prejudice Mr. Oyler in his right to a fair trial.”

The motion, which will be heard March 21, “is not unusual; it’s an effort to sever the capital counts from the non-capital counts,” said Deputy District Attorney Michael Hestrin. He said he will file a written response with Riverside County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Prevost.

McDonald argues that Oyler should face six separate cases with the charges arranged on the types of evidence gathered from May through October 2006, when 62 fires struck the Banning Pass area.

Oyler is charged with starting 23 of them. He also faces five murder counts and 17 charges of using a device to commit arson.

He was arrested shortly the deadly Esperanza Fire, which began Oct. 26, 2006. Arson investigators said the 43,000-acre blaze was started by a device made of six wooden matches attached to a lit cigarette with a rubber band.

Driven by Santa Ana winds, the fire moved from its 1 a.m. flashpoint near Cabazon up the side of the San Jacinto Mountains. The five firefighters who perished were trapped by flames as they defended a home.

During Oyler’s preliminary hearing last year, investigators described six distinct devices used to set the fires the former Beaumont mechanic is charged with.

“Only two of the fires bear any forensic connection to Mr. Oyler,” McDonald argues. DNA was collected from the remains of cigarettes laid across wooden matchsticks on arson fires set June 9 and 10, 2006, in the Banning Pass area.

McDonald wants the case broken down into cigarettes placed over matches; matches bound by a rubber band to a cigarette (including the Esperanza Fire); “open flame device” fires which investigators declared arson by process of elimination; wooden matches; cigarette-and-paper match devices; and matches affixed to a cigarette with a strip of duct tape.

Oyler, 37, remains in custody without bail. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.”

Ex-San Diego Fire Chief: "The Time for Action is Now"

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags
Chief Bowman
Chief Bowman

An excerpt from the North County Times:

“RANCHO BERNARDO — In unveiling a report on regional firefighting strategies at a news conference Tuesday, former San Diego fire Chief Jeff Bowman said, “Much of what government does is this.”

Bowman stooped down to pick up a pile of documents nearly a foot thick. “This is what we produced after the (2003) Cedar fire.”

There is no need for more studies, said Bowman, who lives in Escondido.

“The time for action is now,” he said.

Speaking from a hilltop cul-de-sac where three Rancho Bernardo homes were incinerated in the Witch Creek fire last fall, Bowman and other members of a group called the San Diego Regional Fire Safety Forum outlined a checklist of actions they believe the region must take to avoid a similar catastrophe.

They called on the region’s most influential agencies to buy four new firefighting helicopters and 50 fire engines, and consolidate the numerous rural fire districts into a regional fire authority like one in Orange County, among other things.”

Yesterday, Feb. 19, the San Diego City Council unanimously approved the acquisition of a second helicopter for the city Fire-Rescue Department. They estimate it will cost $16 million and should be in service by August.

Photo of Chief Bowman, courtesy of SignOnSanDiego, 2006.

Man Convicted of Starting the Day Fire

Author BillPosted on Categories WildfireTags ,

Day Fire mapYesterday a federal jury convicted a homeless man, Steven Emory Butcher, of starting the Day Fire, which in 2006 burned over 160,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest. The charges included willfully setting debris on fire in the forest and allowing a fire to escape from his control. The same jury also found him guilty of causing the 2002 Ellis Fire that burned about 70 acres in the same area.

The 49-year-old man faces up to 11 1/2 years in prison. The fire started in a remote area where Butcher camped for part of the year. It burned for four weeks through 254 square miles of chaparral and scattered pines in and around the Sespe Wilderness, a remote area with steep and rugged terrain. It destroyed 11 structures. The costs for suppression were over $73 million.