California – Governor Gavin Newsom has told state emergency officials to send more firefighting resources to several California counties that are dealing with critical fire weather conditions. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) has sent extra staff and equipment to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Inyo counties to help with the high temperatures and strong winds that are forecast to raise the risk of fires through the weekend. This is in addition to prior deployments across Southern California.
This week’s prepositioning plan builds on resources that have already been dispatched to Kern, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Bernardino counties. There are 52 fire engines, 10 water tenders, 9 bulldozers, 5 helicopters, 10 hand crews, 14 dispatchers, and 2 Incident Management Teams on standby across the seven counties. Local fire departments and the state work together to choose staging areas so that reaction times are as short as possible when new incidents happen.
State authorities stressed that the goal of the program is to keep little fires from turning into big ones. California can decrease response times and give local workers quick help when fires break out by predeploying equipment and people. This approach works well with the Fire and Rescue Mutual Aid System, which remains available to help out in other areas if needed…