Kern County supervisors approved a $6 million temporary loan to the Kern County Fire Department Tuesday. The money will keep the department's budget afloat until the state and federal government reimburse the county for fighting wildland fires.
“Last season was a record-setting fire season, in a bad way,” Kern County Fire Chief Brian Marshall said.
The Erskine Fire was the county’s most destructive but the Deer, Ranch and Cedar fires also drained county resources.
Across the state, Marshall said, the story was the same: a lot of big wildland fires that took tons of money to fight. Fire teams from Kern County helped out on many of those big blazes.
When firefighters head to an out-of-county fire, he said, they bill the state for the cost to send fire teams to those blazes and add a 10 percent administrative fee on top.