A newly proposed state bill with bipartisan support would keep CAL FIRE firefighters employed year-round — and help with staffing issues, its supporters said.
The Fight for Firefighters Act proposes to transition about 3,000 seasonal firefighters who are employed for nine months a year into 12-month employees to increase the number of firefighters ready to respond to emergencies at any given moment and to provide relief to understaffed firefighters.
Related: You can track LA wildfire-related legislation with this tool
The proposed legislation was announced during a news conference in Sacramento on Tuesday, Feb. 4, featuring both Democrats and Republicans. Legislators unveiled it exactly four weeks after the deadly wildfires that swept through Los Angeles County last month first broke out.
CAL FIRE Battalion Chief Liz Brown said during the press conference that there was a time when California’s fire season lasted three or four months. But that’s no longer the case.
“Fire season is now all year long, and yet we still rely on outdated models to determine our response,” she said. “We cannot continue to nickel and dime public safety and expect anything but catastrophic consequences.”
Brown said the toll on firefighters is real, from seeing personal relationships suffer to suicides. She noted the high number of calls to CAL FIRE’s mental health helpline by employees and urged more support for firefighters who are stretched too thin.
“Fire doesn’t take a break, and neither should our commitment to those who fight it,” she said.
Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire’s office later put out a news release noting that firefighters endure severe mental health challenges as well as face injuries, fatigue and stress that often lead to burnout. More than 57,000 calls have been made by firefighters to the state’s mental health hotline in the last six years, according to the Senate leader’s office.
McGuire said transitioning CAL FIRE firefighters to year-round employees would result in all 356 CAL FIRE engines throughout the state being fully staffed 365 days a year, something he called “a much-needed shot in the arm.”
The text of the bill was not available Tuesday, but supporters said it would also allow all CAL FIRE vegetation management crews, who clear dead or decaying trees and other brush that can fuel fires, and all CAL FIRE helicopter bases to be fully operational year-round.
Employing firefighters year-round is expected to cost the state $175 million to $185 million annually, said McGuire.
But he noted that the losses incurred by the city and county of Los Angeles as a result of last month’s deadly wildfires are expected to be much greater than that amount — and do not account for the toll of human suffering due to lives being upended or lost.
“We should not be pinching pennies when sparks are flying,” McGuire said during the press conference, which featured both Democratic and Republican legislators and CAL FIRE firefighters.
Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, R-San Diego, noted that his constituents lived through the Cedar fire in 2003 and Witch Creek fire in 2007. Like many of the Democratic legislators who spoke at the press conference, he said that fire preparedness shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
“It’s important to come together to move smart legislation forward and make strategic investments. … When there is a large mega-fire, we want to ensure that there are firefighters ready to respond at a moment’s notice 365 days a year. Every corner of California needs this bipartisan solution to protect homes and save lives,” said Jones, who plans to co-author the bill.
Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez represents Altadena and Pasadena communities ravaged by last month’s Eaton fire. That fire damaged or destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed at least 17 people.
On Tuesday, she thanked firefighters and said the Fight for Firefighters Act would provide more support for overworked firefighters.
“Let’s make sure our firefighters are taken care of and give them the 12-month employment they need and deserve to have adequate relief and medical attention during disasters — and mental health and recovery support in between. These heroes need our help,” Pérez said.
Sen. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, who represents the Palisades, where the largest wildfire broke out last month, said the proposed legislation would ensure more firefighter boots on the ground at any given moment.
“This is ultimately about giving our firefighters the support they need. … They’re not machines. They simply can’t work back-to-back 24-, 36-hour shifts over and over again without breaks to eat and sleep and remediate from all that smoke inhalation,” Allen said.
Following the press conference, Senate Republicans said in a news release that their members were “encouraged by the initial bipartisan” response in the upper chamber to the recent wildfires yet “remain wary” because previous attempts by GOP members to address wildfire concerns were rejected by Democrats.
The Senate Republican Caucus also shared a list of other fire-related bills introduced this year by GOP legislators. These include:
• SB 87, introduced by Sen. Kelly Seyarto of Murrieta, to extend the sales tax exemption on fundraising activities for all-volunteer fire departments.
• SB 90, another Seyarto bill, to allow Prop. 4 funding to be used to strategically place “prepositioned mobile rigid water storage and mobile rigid dip tanks” in high-risk wildfire areas to reduce helicopter response time for fighting fires.
• SB 223, introduced by Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil of Amador County, to require the state to build and maintain a statewide integrated wildfire smoke and health data platform.
• SB 252, introduced by Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares of Santa Clarita, to exempt power line infrastructure from California Environmental Quality Act requirements in order to expedite projects to place power lines underground.
• SB 264, also by Valladares, to allow prosecutors to charge individuals who impersonate a police officer or firefighter during a state of emergency with a felony.
• SB 265, another Valladares bill, to classify burglary committed during a state of emergency — including during or after a wildfire — as a felony.
• SB 268, introduced by Sen. Steven Choi of Irvine, to exclude from taxable income any settlement payments from a state of emergency as declared by the governor.
• SB 269, also introduced by Choi, to provide a tax credit to homeowners who perform qualified home hardening or vegetation management on their properties.
In addition to these bills introduced by Senate Republicans, other state legislators have proposed various bills in response to the wildfires.
This week, for example, Pérez, the senator from Pasadena, introduced SB 256 to enhance the resiliency and reliability of electrical infrastructure in disaster-prone areas by requiring utility companies to prioritize placing power lines underground, expanding the use of microgrid technologies and implementing stronger safeguards and standards for power shutoffs.