California wildfire season on track to break records, National Guard says
California is on track to exceed its worst fire season on record and there’s little relief in sight, the new chief of the National Guard Bureau said Wednesday.
About 1,300 National Guard members from five states including California are currently assisting Cal Fire fight the fires, which have already consumed more than 1.6 million acres, or an area roughly the size of Delaware, said Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson. He assumed command of the nation’s 450,000 National Guard members last month.
About 2 million acres burned in 2018, the California’s deadliest fire year on record, when the Camp Fire consumed much of the city of Paradise in Butte County.
Worse, this is just the beginning of fire season, said Army Maj. Gen. Matthew P. Beevers, the California National Guard’s assistant Adjutant General.
“There’s fundamentally no real-term end state to the current fire situation we have,” Beevers said. “I’m thinking weeks into months before these things are fully contained.”
Beevers said California has already seen the second largest wildfire in the state’s history, the Bay Area’s SCU Lightning Complex, burn during this fire season, similar to record-sized fires the state faced last year, he said.
“They keep getting worse every year,” Beevers said.
Beevers said climate change is to blame for the increased severity of the fires.
“The deleterious effects of climate change continue to challenge our state, our state’s firefighting resources,” Beevers said.
The National Guard can add forces if needed, Hokanson said. At present the Guard is providing aviation support from CH-47 Chinook helicopters and C-130 cargo aircraft to transport Cal Fire teams. Another 560 National Guard service members assigned to provide a follow-on force to Cal Fire to ensure fires do not restart after Cal Fire has put them out and 260 more troops are getting rid of shrubbery or other items that could fuel additional fire outbursts.
The National Guard has a total of about 64,000 service members activated at present to assist with a long list of demands currently pressing on the force, including COVID-19 support, response to civil unrest, hurricanes, overseas deployments and military exercises.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 3:19 PM with the headline "California wildfire season on track to break records, National Guard says."
