California adding nearly 1,400 firefighters, including 70 in North Bay, as state weathers another dry year

SACRAMENTO — California will hire nearly 1,400 additional firefighters as an unusually dry winter stokes fears of another devastating wildfire season, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday.

California depends on snowfall in the mountains for much of its water. But the latest snow survey recorded a statewide “snow water equivalent” of just 15 inches, or about 54% of average for April 1, when the state's snowpack is the deepest.

The state had a similarly dry winter last year. What followed was a record-setting wildfire season where more than 4% of the state’s land burned, destroying nearly 10,500 buildings and killing 33 people.

Tuesday, Newsom said he was using his emergency authority to spend $80.74 million to hire 1,399 additional firefighters at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as Cal Fire. More than 19,000 firefighters battled blazes in California last year.

“We aren’t just waiting for the next crisis to hit — this funding will support our heroic firefighters to save lives as they work to prevent and tackle destructive wildfires,” Newsom said in a news release.

Most of the new firefighters will be seasonal through June 30. Newsom said Cal Fire will assign 1,256 firefighters to eight understaffed fire crews.

Another 24 firefighters will join the California National Guard hand crews who work to get rid of dead trees and other brush that fuel fires. Newsom said 119 firefighters will join crews trained to drop in wildfire zones via helicopter.

For Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit, that will bring an added 70 personnel to the normal seasonal bank of 174 seasonal firefighters, according to Cal Fire’s Sonoma County Division Chief Ben Nicholls.

Those positions will go toward rebuilding a 40-person hand crew team that operated on a temporary basis last fire season, in part to backfill for a reduction in inmate firefighting crews.

Several new hires will bolster the team at the Boggs Mountain helitack base in Lake County, where they are expecting to receive one of Cal Fire’s sleek new twin-engine helicopters that can carry more people.

The remainder will go toward staffing engines, allowing for an earlier reopening of the Cal Fire station in Geyserville. Nicholls said the agency hopes to have those personnel brought on by the last week of April.

Nicholls said fire activity has already been alarming for this time of year, noting a nearly 900-acre blaze in Siskiyou County.

“The conditions out there with the wind we’re having and the temps we’re having are driving those fuels to cure out sooner than we’d like,” Nicholls said.

While Newsom’s moves will bolster the state’s seasonal firefighting crews, the state’s two U.S. senators and nearly two dozen of its Congressional representatives asked the Biden administration on Monday to establish a year-round wildland firefighting force.

California’s peak wildfire season typically runs from the summer through late fall. But wildfires can happen anytime, especially in dry weather conditions. A fire in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border that started on Saturday burned 1.3 square miles before it was contained, according to Cal Fire.

Press Democrat Staff Writer Julie Johnson contributed to this report.