Firefighters exhausted by serious fires in California: NPR

City of Los Angeles fire department firefighters had just returned to duty after responding to the mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, when they saw smoke filling the roof. sky.

About 12 hours after responding to a horrible incident, they were heading to another one.

In the afternoon, they were fighting the Woolsey Fire, one of the largest ever recorded in Los Angeles County, according to the KPCC member station. They had a break only a week later, when they finally asked for help.

Due to the longer fire season and chronic understaffing, firefighters are exhausted, overworked and emotional – and overtime becomes a point of contention.

It's the job of Frank Lima to help firefighters get the resources and the rest they need. As vice-president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), Lima is attentive to the concerns of firefighters in his region, provides resources such as advice and defends the interests of firefighters in the negotiation agreements.

In the fight against fires, overtime is expected to respond to emergencies and ensure that the job is complete. However, Lima said that in recent years, the number of overtime hours had exploded in many departments due to staffing problems, compounded by the frequency and destructiveness of wildfires in California.

L.A. Times recently reviewed the overtime data provided by the LA County Fire Department and found that overtime costs had increased by 36% in recent years.

Other counties that have contracts with the California Department of Forests and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, to protect local and national lands have similar spikes.

NPR analyzed the Government Compensation in California database, managed by the State Comptroller's Office, to calculate total overtime wages as a percentage of total wages.

In five counties, the percentage of firefighter wages paid for overtime has gradually increased between 2012 and 2017, an average of about 1.5 percentage points per year. According to Frank Neuhauser, senior researcher at the Berkeley University Institute for Societal Problems and an expert in workplace insurance, this number represents a significant increase.

"It's a very strong trend for something like this," he said. "Imagine that this trend is continuing, you will find that wages will increase twenty percent in twenty years.If you look at the private sector, it's probably no longer a flat line."

The largest increase was recorded in Santa Barbara County, where overtime wages accounted for 33.56% of total fire department employee salaries in the last year. This was up from 2012, when overtime wages accounted for 23.88%.

All counties analyzed except one had overtime pay percentages of more than 30% of total salaries in 2017. In the private sector, according to Neuhauser, overtime percentages of total compensation are between 5% and 10%. .

"I have been a firefighter in the LA fire department for over 26 years," said Lima. "It was not like that when I started; [it] It was not like it was now for overtime. "

The new reality of the California forest fire season

Rick Swan never worked without a day off, this is 32 days in a row, fighting two consecutive fires in 2007. Swan is the Director of Wildland Fire Fighting (IAFF).

"When I was working, it was not the norm, now it's the norm," Swan said. "We have members today who spend 32 days, take two days off and come back within 30 days."

Part of the problem is a longer fire season.

"The number of fires has not necessarily increased much, but it's the duration," Swan said. "We did not have some of those big, gigantic fires that take forever to get cleaned up."

In the past 13 In recent months, California has experienced two of its largest forest fires in terms of area, two of its most destructive fires in terms of lost structures and the deadliest ever, with at least 85 fatalities.

During the summer, the Carr fire burned more than 220,000 hectares and destroyed about 1,600 structures, making it the seventh largest and the seventh largest forest fire of the year. 39, history of the state. California Governor Jerry Brown has called the "new normal" forest fires rampant throughout the state in early August and warned of the financial stress that fires could cause.

Problems of understaffing in many departments

In response to the worsening of forest fires, Swan would like to see the number of firefighters recruited increase, which would require a larger firefighting budget.

"If the governor from California says this is the new standard, we should recruit for the new standard, "said Swan.

The demands on firefighters have increased because firefighters do not just react to fires. Now, says Swan, they respond to all types of emergency calls.

As a result, Swan and Lima argue that the lack of personnel is a permanent problem, not only in times of forest fires. The fire department of the city L.A. of Lima almost six years without hiring new firefighters. At the same time, hundreds of people have retired, leaving vacant positions unfilled.

"We were so exhausted that many were forced to work overtime," he said.

The hiring of new firefighters is a long process, complicated by local budget restrictions. Mike Towns, a battalion chief of the San Mateo Consolidated Fire Department, said that between background checks and training in an academy, the recruitment of a new firefighter can take six to nine months .

However, he is trying to recruit three more firefighters per shift, unlike the 41 ministry employees, to anticipate emergency situations.

"It's a very good line, you do not want to overload staff," he said, adding that it would be a waste of taxpayers' money.

In some situations, it may be cheaper to have a firefighter work overtime than to hire a new firefighter and pay for benefits. The moment it becomes more profitable to hire a new firefighter varies from one department to another.

What does the increase in overtime look like

Cal Fire has full-time firefighters and hires seasonal firefighters during the peak fire months. When major fires occur, Cal Fire may request local resources under the California Mutual Aid Agreement (CMMAA). Then local fire departments send their striking teams.

Nobody sleeps in the first 24 to 48 hours of a gigantic hell like the campfire.

Bret McTigue, a battalion chief from Marin County, said his strike crews had arrived an hour after the camp started fire. For four consecutive days, they remained on the line of fire.

"They did not feel comfortable to leave, and consciously they have trouble leaving the line of fire," he said. "It's tough, but the adrenaline keeps you going and they want to save lives and buildings."

In the first response to a fire, departments use a "24-hour, 24-hour off" cycle. Here is what it looks like:

Firefighters get up early. They attend a 7 am morning briefing at base camp, and then spend hours on the scene of firefighting. They arrive at the fire line at 10 o'clock.

During the next 24 hours, they will fight against the flames. They are relieved the next day at 10 am when a new shift arrives. They can not rest until they arrive at the base camp, usually at 13 hours.

Then the cycle repeats itself.

"We are trying to minimize 24-hour spending directly on the firing line," McTigue said. "But they could literally lie in someone's yard and sleep for 20 minutes." They are pushed to exhaustion. "

Deployments of local strike teams last two weeks, sometimes longer. Local firefighters who are not deployed also work overtime, replacing positions left vacant by members of the strike team. After two weeks, local departments can send rescue teams, often replacing a tired group – firefighters working longer on the fire – with another, those working in their local jurisdiction.

"Two weeks is our time of arrival," McTigue said. "We like exchanging teams and bringing in rescue teams, but people in Marin are not new."

If the firefighters can continue, the local service will keep them for seven days, which is the same as the 21-day firefighter deployment of Cal Fire. Working 21 days in a row becomes more and more common as the big forest fires in California burn for weeks.

"The last two years have been crazy in California," Towns said.

Overtime works differently for Cal Fire firefighters and local firefighters. Local firefighters work two consecutive days, accumulating 48 hours of normal pay. If they work a day when they are not scheduled, they earn overtime.

The Cal Fire firefighters work for three consecutive days, accumulating 72 hours, including 19 paid overtime hours. The rest is paid at the minimum wage. After 72 hours, all hours are overtime.

During the 2017-2018 fire season, Cal Fire estimated the total firefighting expenses of the emergency fund at $ 773 million, a figure still under calculation. This is already an increase over 2016-17, while total expenses amounted to $ 534 million.

The firefighting expenses of the emergency fund are normally borne by the state, which will also reimburse local agencies the cost of fighting large fires as part of the agreement. mutual aid. However, the White House has recently approved major disaster and emergency declarations for devastating fires in Los Angeles, Ventura and Butte counties, which means that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA ) will contribute 75% of these fire suppression costs.

Fight a longer fire season

Recruiting for the fire season usually means that Cal Fire employs thousands of seasonal workers from June 1st to November 1st. Some work in contract counties, such as Marin County, since these counties have an agreement with Cal Fire to protect local and state lands.

Last year, McTigue noticed that Marin County had welcomed its seasonal workers in May, once the National Weather Service had issued red flag warnings and weather warnings in the event of a fire. It was a month earlier than usual.

Second, seasonal workers, usually laid off on November 1, were laid off only in January 2018.

Although this year has started normally, McTigue said it was likely that seasonal workers would stay until December, or even January, knowing that the typical November 1 deadline had already passed.

"We have staff most of the year," McTigue said. "There is no doubt that in the last three years we have had the largest fires in the state, the duration of the fires is longer and the costs are higher."

Sustainable impact of overtime

Fighting fires while you feel exhausted can result in more accidents at the workplace, but can also have an emotional impact that, according to Rick Swan and Frank Lima of IAFF, is equally serious.

"We see charred corpses, there are certain smells that we never forget," Lima said. "There are some shouting sounds that we never get out of our head years later."

Firefighters need time to deal with the horrors they see when they are on the front lines, a time they often miss, according to Lima. He added that it exposes them to a higher risk of PTSD or other mental health problems.

"I have seen more colleagues commit suicide in the last seven years than in the past 20 years," he said.

That's a trend that Swan has also seen during his more than 30-year career with Cal Fire and his career with IAFF. Although IAFF offers a number of advisory and assistance services, Swan and Lima state that firefighters trying to cope with their emotions often have mental health, addiction and alcohol problems.

Swan still remembers the fighting sensation that he has experienced for days.

"People are frustrated because they end up going from one fire to another or they work the same fire for a long time." he said. "It's a bit like this Groundhog Day effect, it goes on and on."

* Orange County data specifically related to fire service was not readily available