Crews on Glass fire ‛spread very thinʹ amid historic California wildfire season

California’s firefighting ranks have been strained for weeks amid a historic outbreak of wildfire that has left fewer crews available to battle local blazes, including the Glass fire burning in Sonoma and Napa counties.

Fire authorities said Wednesday they would prefer to have double the force of 2,000 firefighters they now have assembled against the 48,440-acre fire.

But with more than two dozen other major wildfires burning across California ― and about as many fire starts on Tuesday alone, according to Cal Fire ― not enough manpower exists in the state’s standing army of firefighters and outside crews to reinforce each blaze at ideal levels.

“With all the amount of the fires we have going on, the resources that we have are limited, and they’re spread very thin,“ said Cal Fire Chief Mark Brunton, who arrived in Sonoma County after stints fighting large wildfires in Mendocino and Santa Cruz counties earlier this year. Statewide, 3.9 million acres have burned in 2020, nearly doubling the previous record from 2018.

As a result, Cal Fire hasn’t been able to attack the Glass fire as aggressively as it would have with more staffing.

“We have to draw a bigger box and give up ground that we wouldn’t have otherwise given up,” said Ben Nicholls, the Sonoma County-based division chief for Cal Fire.

The short staffing extends already prolonged firefights and delays firefighters’ deployment from one blaze to another, Nicholls said. “It takes us longer to mop up that fire and secure that fire before we can release those resources.”

As is, Glass fire crews account for 11% of all wildland firefighters deployed statewide. It was not immediately clear whether any other fire had a larger workforce, though Nicholls said Wednesday evening the Glass fire was “one of the more robustly staffed fires across the state right now.”

The August Complex fire, the largest on record in California, remains mostly uncontained and is closing in on 1 million acres, largely within national forestland in seven counties, including Mendocino and Lake. To the east, the deadly Zogg fire, blamed in four deaths, continues to grow southwest of Redding. And lightning-sparked blazes that erupted last month in Sonoma and Napa counties have yet to be fully contained.

So unlike last October, when more than 5,200 firefighting personnel assembled to battle the Kincade fire, available resources are scarce this time, with less of the mutual aid crews that would otherwise arrive from outside the area to help.

A wildfire the size of the Glass would normally draw 3,000 to 4,000 firefighting personnel, Brunton said.

As other fires elsewhere in the state come under control, firefighters could come from there to the front lines of the Glass and other active fires, Nicholls said.

But reaching that ideal staffing level is not likely to happen anytime soon unless the weather cooperates and new fire starts are locked down almost as soon as they start.

“I don’t think any fire in the last month and a half has had the adequate resources it normally does,“ said Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner. “We shouldn’t expect that to change for the rest of the summer.”

“There’s just very, very little extra resource,” he added, then paused. “Well, there is no extra resource.”

Brunton acknowledged that Cal Fire is experiencing a shortage of hand crews, which are especially valuable in steep rugged terrain on the Glass fire and statewide. This is largely because California relies so much on state prisoners to fight fires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom launched an early release program this year to curb the deadly spread of COVID-19 in the state’s prison population. That move reduced the state’s inmate ranks by several hundred incarcerated firefighters. A dozen of the prison system’s firefighting camps also were put on lockdown this summer over worries that inmate firefighters were potentially exposed to the coronavirus spreading through the corrections system.

Newsom said the state would have to hire more than 800 extra seasonal firefighters to backfill the work of the inmate fire crews.

"Some of the toughest work that's done out there on the lines, some of the most important work, is done by these hand crews," he said during a July press conference. At that time, just 94 of the state's 192 inmate crews were active, according to reporting by NPR. "We have some urgency to provide supplemental support in terms of seasonal firefighters."

Brunton said the shortage of those crews has been clear on the Glass fire.

“If we had more, certainly we could have a better effect on it,” he said.

But firefighters would still be captive to the whims of the weather, he noted, a day ahead of the expected arrival of troublesome northwest winds that could stretch the southeast flank of the Glass fire, threatening communities in Napa and Sonoma counties

“Even when you have all the tools, Mother Nature always wins,” Brunton said, “and sometimes we just have to let Mother Nature do her thing, and then we react to it at that point when it’s safe to do so.”

The firefighters assigned to the Glass fire are split between Sonoma and Napa counties, where most are working 24-hour shifts on the line, returning to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds for 24 hours of rest and resupply if operations go as planned.

Cal Fire officials did not offer a split of how many are working on the Sonoma side of the fire. An active firefight can have many fronts and frequent changes in priority, they said, leading to crews being sent to and from around the Glass fire’s perimeter.

On Wednesday morning, roughly 400 firefighting personnel were set to be deployed to the Sonoma County side of the line, with at least 500 others working on the Napa side, according to a Press Democrat review of Cal Fire incident information.

With so few resources available, double shifts and even triple shifts — 72-hours consecutively — were endured by some firefighters early in the Glass fire response, Brunton said.

Sleeping trailers that recently arrived at Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa and local hotels will be used to let firefighters rest and recover in cooler, sheltered quarters between deployments, Brunton said.

“That way they’re better prepared so when we put them back at the line, they’re more effective in doing they’re job,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.