Keeping regions safe: Pre-positioning of firefighters this week in Lake Tahoe

For just the second time, fire crews from California communities came together and stationed themselves in a community other than their own on orders from the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services(Cal OES).

A red flag warning was up for the Lake Tahoe Basin Friday and Saturday, with high winds, high temperatures and low humidity in the forecast making the situation ripe for a large fire.

South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue (SLTFR) Chief Jeff Meston went to Cal OES and said conditions existed for a dangerous fire, and they said his request met their criteria and sent five fire apparatus and a task force leader to be at the lake.

Engines from Rough and Ready, Clarksburg, Hughson and Copperopolis Fire were in Lake Tahoe along with a Department of Corrections engine. They were in Lake Tahoe for about 32 hours, during the highest period of threat for a fire.

After last year's catastrophic fire in the Santa Rosa and Napa area, pre-positioning has been discussed at the state level. Since the 1970s fire resources have moved up and down the state, but after last year's fires, California fire chiefs, League of California City's chiefs and others got together and knew they needed to revise the state's mutual aid system developed originally in the 1950s.

Chief Meston represents NorCal chiefs on the State's task force for mutual aid and will be President of California Fire Chief's Association in 2019. He has been in Sacramento testifying about emergency fire operations over the past several months. He and the other chiefs asked for $100M to have pre-positioning and mutual aid fire services in the state. Last year they got $25M, and this year another $25M, not what they asked for but enough to pay for things like this week's visit by the five fire departments.

The first time the emergency pre-positioning was employed was earlier this year in Santa Barbara. In that case, a fire did break out and the resources were used.

To get a pre-positioning arrangement, the region needs to tell Cal OES they believe conditions exist and criteria is evaluated> If deemed valid the request is granted. The goal, if any were to have a fire, is that resources would be automatically available and there would be no wait time for assistance.

"This is the next generation of firefighting," said Meston.

"We are seeing longer, bigger fires than we've ever experienced," said Meston. He said its significant to have resources ready to fight fires.

"Everyone has resources out fighting fires elsewhere," explained Meston. His department has had firefighters at the Ferguson Fire, and all others at the lake have sent teams out as well.

Mutual aid regionally is not something new. Around Lake Tahoe the fire departments are there for each other, and sometimes that cooperative reach goes into Truckee, Reno and Carson City. It is quick response when Lake Tahoe area fire fighters are sent out locally to help around the lake. If they must, departments will call back off duty staff to cover.

The western states are currently receiving mutual aid from the east coast, and from as far away as New Zealand and Australia.

With so many fires through the state of California, could we possibly run out of firefighters?

There are approximately 6,000 fire engines in the state, said Meston. The mutual aid system is designed to use one-quarter of them. To send 50 percent of the SLTFR engines (known as draw down), one engine would leave and one engine would stay in South Lake Tahoe. Tahoe Douglas Fire would be able to draw down two engines.

Large fire events will have a command team in place, and their job is to try and forecast resources ahead of need. 50 percent of the crews are on duty at most times, giving the other half time to rest. Resources will move up and down the state so no region is left uncovered. Due to travel and preparing time, response can be more like hours or a day, and not minutes.

Meston said theoretically fires could run out of firefighters to fight them, but it hasn't happened. Fire officials will work crews 24-hours-a-day until help arrives. During Monday's Donnell Fire south of Arnold, the daily fire report said: Due to the other large fires in the region and state, firefighters and equipment are extremely scarce. Hand crews, engines, and equipment have been ordered and are pending. Other local incident management teams are sharing aircraft and personnel as they can.

In the Napa/Santa Rosa fire, they called for resources, but didn't get anything until 12-24 hours later. There were many other fires burning at the time and a lot of people were at their draw down already.

Since that fire, three major areas have been evaluated and implemented:

1) Take advantage of technology, they are using state funds to put GPSs tracking on all apparatus in the state to see who is closest when a fire breaks out;
2) Dispatch centers were found to be overwhelmed - Need to get extra dispatchers into the area, augment dispatch during critical events;
3) Pre-position firefighting resources during critical fire danger, such as red flag events or predicted mud slide events, if resources can get into the area before it happens, areas will be better prepared. Calfire already does it in six counties, and the South Lake Tahoe event this past weekend shows it can work.