There are so many ways in which this budget will hurt innocent citizens. I'm one of the ones in the "life-threatened" category myself. I know others have their jobs threatened, their educational plans destroyed, their health put at risk, their community safety jeopardized. There WERE alternatives to the cuts which were chosen, but this is what we got, and the situation is hard to understand.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to seek the elimination of more than 1,700 state firefighting positions and closure of scores of fire stations if voters reject key ballot measures in the May 19 special election, according to documents obtained by The Chronicle on Monday.
Schwarzenegger's proposal involves slashing $80.8 million from Cal Fire's spending plan - a 10 percent reduction - by eliminating 602 full-time positions and 1,100 seasonal firefighting positions. The cuts would be part of a series of deep cuts to the state budget.
Cal Fire, the state's fire agency, has about 5,000 full-time firefighters. At the peak of last year's fire season, more than 2,700 wild fires ravaged the state and the agency hired extra help: 3,000 seasonal firefighters.
Arnold seems to have quickly forgotten the record-setting 2008 fire season, and the 2007 fires before that, and the 2003 fires before that, etc, etc. And considering that the US Forest Service's firefighting problems haven't yet been straightened out, and that firefighting capacity is being cut as cities try to balance their budgets, Arnold's proposal is likely a death sentence for many vulnerable communities this coming summer.
Obviously Arnold is trying to scare voters into supporting his craptacular May 19 propositions. But voters can smell desperation a mile away, and they're not likely to be swayed by this truly insane proposal.
What Arnold's crazy "let's burn down California - literally!" plan will actually do is show voters that Republicans, whether they are for or against the May 19 propositions, are really just hell-bent on destroying our government and leaving everyone to fend for themselves. The last time a Republican demonstrated that to the public, as Bush did after Hurricane Katrina, his party's public support collapsed and they were thrown out of power at the first available opportunity.
The same will happen here in California. The question is whether Arnold and his wingnut allies will destroy the state first. They're already pouring gasoline on everything in sight...
As my recent diaries have shown there is a shortage of firefighters to meet the unprecedented amount of fires burning across our state. As I began digging into this yesterday I came across the same report highlighted in today's Monterey Herald - that US Forest Service firefighting efforts have been cut to the bone and left the nation vulnerable to massive fires. Deliberate staffing shortages have left the USFS unable to do vital off-season brush clearance, and left them without the staffing to get a quick jump on fires in their crucial initial stages.
The federal firefighting system is "imploding" in California, due to poor spending decisions and high job vacancy rates, as the region struggles to keep pace with what looks to be a historic fire season, a firefighters' advocacy group charges.
As a result, the firefighters say, small fires have exploded into extended, multimillion-dollar conflagrations because the U.S. Forest Service has been unable to contain them during the early "initial attack" stage...
As the "sheer number" of California wildfires pushed the nation to its worst measurable level of wildland-fire preparedness last week - Level 5 - a national multiagency coordinating group announced in a memo Monday that firefighter staffing levels in Northern California "cannot be maintained."
The report, by the FWFSA, has been around for a few months now. Wildland firefighters have been screaming about the issue to anyone who would listen, including Dianne Feinstein:
After facing pressure from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other lawmakers last spring, the Forest Service promised it would immediately fill its vacancies and launched a "Fire Hire" campaign to attract firefighters in Sacramento that concluded two weeks ago.
"I believe the agency should have been able to muster a stronger force," Feinstein said. "All signs indicate that things will only get worse."
Feinstein said that despite promises of full staffing from [USFS Administrator Mark] Rey, only 186 of the agency's 276 engines were manned at the start of the 2008 fire season.
Ron Thatcher, president of the union that represents 20,000 Forest Service employees, has estimated that attrition has left the service at 70 percent to 80 percent of its authorized staffing levels, and that up to 39 percent of fire crew leader positions were vacant as the 2008 fire season kicked off.
Rey, Bush's USFS administrator, has a long background in the timber industry. He blames environmentalists for the problems, but firefighters and those who know the issue are having none of it.
