It's hard to describe the destruction caused by wild land fires the last two years. However, Chief Brian Marshall says his team is ready to minimize future damage this season.
After the last two wild land fire seasons, Kern county fire Chief Marshall says it's only a matter of time before there is smoke in the air. Two years ago the erskine fire burned nearly 300 homes in the Kern River Valley and last year the county's department was on the front lines of fires in northern California.
According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, last year there were more than 7000 fires across the state, burning over five hundred thousand acres. The Kern County Fire Department says there were 1,181 vegetation fires dispatched last year and of those, 641 were logged as vegetation fires.