March 31--CalFire will hire 29 more seasonal firefighters in its Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit starting Monday and will open its Healdsburg station, responding to a threat of wildfire that has been dramatically heightened by the long drought.
Several hundred seasonal firefighters are being brought on to staff fire stations in locations extending from the Sacramento foothills to San Diego County, said CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant.
Of the new Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit firefighters, five will go to Sonoma County, five to Lake County, five to Napa County and five to Colusa County. Another nine will be floating assignments. The unit has about 300 permanent firefighters.
"It's all weather driven," said Suzie Blankenship, spokeswoman for the regional unit, which also covers Solano, Colusa and Yolo counties.
Hiring is taking place much earlier than usual statewide. It follows the hiring of about 100 firefighters statewide in January, which was when the Santa Rosa CalFire office opened for the fire season, the earliest it ever had done so.
"We are several months ahead of schedule," said Berlant. Normally, additional hiring starts in mid-May or even early in June, he said.
Between Jan. 1 and March 22, the state firefighting agency responded to more than 800 wildland blazes. In an average year, it responds to fewer than 275 over the same period.
"Even with rain in March, our fire activity has remained 200 percent over the average statewide," Chief Ken Pimlott, CalFire's director, said in a statement.
One key signal of the dangerous year to come flared Jan. 24 on the North Coast, Berlant said.
"The most telling fire this year statewide was a fire that burned 330 acres in Humboldt County," he said, referring to the so-called Red Fire that broke out just south of Berry Summit.
"Humboldt gets the most rainfall in Northern California along the coast. That is really telling," Berlant said.
In another measure of the unusual times, the Santa Rosa CalFire station closed Dec. 21 and opened Jan. 17, closing later and opening much earlier than normal. Blankenship said most years it opens in May.
Six CalFire staff members also have been hired to consult with property owners about creating defensible space around their homes or businesses.
Berlant said paying attention to that fire-preparation tactic is crucial this year, as is not using power tools with metal blades to cut dry grass.
"As we ramp up for fire season, it's really important that residents do their part," he said.
Still, recent rains and those predicted for this week may help tamp the danger for a time, officials said.
"It's really good that it's raining, but I don't think we're going to be able to overcome the deficit," said CalFire Battalion Chief Marshall Turbeville. "But it's good that it's prolonging the spring and delaying the onset of the heat of smmer and the drying out of the wildland fuels."
Copyright 2014 - The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Calif.
