PD Editorial: Fire protection for the ‘new normal’

California has plenty of experience with big fires, but there’s something unusual and menacing about the immense wildfires this fall.

Rather than individual fires, these have been firestorms. First in Wine Country and now across a large area of Southern California, flames erupted in multiple locations and spread rapidly across thousands of acres, at times overwhelming firefighting resources.

The conditions that fueled the fires - warm winds and dry brush - are common in California, but they are persisting deeper into the year.

These weather patterns, predicted by scientists studying climate change, portend longer and more intense fire seasons, a “new normal,” as Gov. Jerry Brown described it.

“This could be something that happens every year or every few years,” Brown told reporters in Ventura County this past weekend. “We’re about to have a firefighting Christmas.”

The threat of late December wildfires isn’t restricted to Southern California. With minimal precipitation so far this fall, and none in the forecast, a Cal Fire battalion chief says conditions in the Bay Area are “scary.”

In the short term, our best hope is rain.

But if the future holds more prolonged dry spells, punctuated by intense rain, the region needs a better long-term strategy for fire protection.

Among other things, that will require Sonoma County officials to take a more active role in restructuring the outdated collection of special districts and volunteer fire departments, some of them dating to the 19th century, presently serving as the front line of defense against wildfire.

Sonoma County has nearly 40 fire departments, including five municipal fire departments, and some areas protected by Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.

Many of the departments serving rural areas are underfunded, understaffed and struggling to keep up with a growing volume of emergency calls.

Consolidation wouldn’t solve all of these problems, at least not right away. It should, however, reduce the financial resources devoted to administrative overhead, provide some flexibility to offset the declining number of volunteer firefighters and eliminate some jurisdictional rivalries that don’t benefit Sonoma County residents.

Besides, with mutual-aid agreements and a central dispatch system, there’s little relationship between fire district boundary lines and the actual response to calls for help.

A dozen years have passed since consolidation was recommended by a county oversight commission, and fire officials have been actively discussing the issue since 2014.

However, with as many as 75 people participating at times, progress has been, at best, incremental despite an investment of $110,000 in public funds.

Some fire chiefs have long seen value in consolidation, while others remain reluctant to see departments with long histories subsumed into larger agencies.

All of them appear to agree that the Board of Supervisors should budget more for fire protection - and more money may be needed if fire season is, as the governor suggested, going to be longer.

However, as Staff Writer J.D. Morris reported Tuesday, the county is projecting an?$80 million-plus budget hit over the next four years as a result of the October fires. To justify any added spending, it will need to be tied to cost-savings from streamlining and reduced overhead.