California may be in the thick of winter, but state fire crews are on the front lines of a new battle.
Fire officials met at the state Capitol Tuesday, planning for another destructive year and to prevent one like 2017. From Napa to Ventura County, 2017 may have been a record year for destructive fires in the state. Flames torched about 1.3 million acres, about six times the average.
But California fire chiefs say they could have saved more lives and terrain, had they deployed crews before the fires even started.
That wasn’t an option. “We’re operating under a 50-year-old system. Things have changed in the last 50 years, and before we depended on mutual aid to get us mutual aid in first 12 to 24 hours. Now we need them in first minutes to hours,” said Contra Costa Fire Protection District Chief Jeff Carman, also representing the Metro Fire Chiefs.