4 Key Things To Know About CA's 2021 Wildfire Season

CALIFORNIA — A perfect storm of worsening drought, rising temperatures and arid fuels suggested that the Golden State is in for another devastating wildfire season, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned Monday from Cal Fire's aviation center in Sacramento.

Newsom on Monday proposed a record $2 billion budget — double what he proposed in January — to get a head start on what could be another disastrous fire season, which may have already begun.

"You're already feeling the temperature shifts," he told reporters. "You already saw those red flag warnings, which are earlier in May than we've seen in many, many years because of the winds that are coming earlier. "

Californians last year were hard-pressed to find refuge between an intensifying coronavirus pandemic and a hellscape of wildfires that hampered air quality all over the state.

A historic 4,257,863 acres of California burned last year in the state's largest fire season in modern history. As fire season was already in full swing last year, more than 12,000 lightning strikes hammered the state, igniting massive fires. The state also experienced its first "gigafire" in 2020: a burn area that exceeded 1 million acres.

Weary firefighters trudged to the front lines for days and months on end as fires crossed into different counties, at times overlapping. Thirty-three lives were lost in last year's megafire season, and thousands of homes were destroyed across the state.

Here are five things to know about how California's 2021 wildfire season is shaping up.

1. Fire Season Is Already Here

There have already been 2,744 wildfires in the state this year, many in Southern California, according to Tuesday data from the National Interagency Fire Center. That is up by more than a thousand over the number during the same period last year, Newsom said.

From Jan. 1 to Monday, more than 15,590 acres have burned, according to the national agency. By contrast, just 2,325 acres had burned by mid-May last year, according to data from Cal Fire.

Last week, a fire quickly swelled to more than 1,000 acres and forced the evacuation of about 1,000 people in Los Angeles's Topanga Canyon.

"This is not normal, to have a big fire like this in May," Scott Ferguson, a Topanga Canyon resident, told the Los Angeles Times. He is board chair of the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness. "This is the type of thing we’d usually be doing in November."

Experts warned that a combination of rising temperatures and longer droughts have primed California for another "fire year."

"We no longer have a brush fire season," Margaret Stewart, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Fire Department, told the Times. "The extended duration of the drought and the dryness of the vegetation across the region means that we have these brush fires throughout the year."

The length of fire season has increased by about 75 days across the Sierras and seems to correspond with an increase in the extent of forest fires across the state, according to Cal Fire.

"While wildfires are a natural part of California’s landscape, the fire season in California and across the West is starting earlier and ending later each year," Cal Fire said in its 2021 Fire Season Outlook.

2. California Is Sinking Deeper Into Drought

Newsom earlier this month declared a drought emergency in 41 of California's 58 counties, encompassing 30 percent of the state's nearly 40 million people.

The U.S. Drought Monitor showed most of the state in extreme drought, with parts of the American West under exceptional drought. Drought conditions have worsened only a few years after the Golden State emerged from a punishing multiyear dry spell.

"None of us are naive about the challenge this state faces, or for that matter the entire Western United States," Newsom said Monday. "Record drought conditions persist all through the Western United States."

The state is falling deeper into drought, which means that firefighters could be up against thousands of miles of dry brush, grass and trees across the state, all ripe for a wildfire season amplified by warming, dry temperatures and high winds.

3. $2 billion Was Proposed To Mitigate Fire Season This Year

Newsom announced a cascade of new spending earlier this month in a newly revealed historic $267.8 billion budget. On Monday, he proposed $2 billion to combat fires this season and to bolster preparedness. It is the largest wildfire budget a governor has ever proposed.

Here's some of what he's proposing.

• $48.4 million to add 12 new Cal Fire "Fire Hawk" helicopters and seven large air tankers.
• $143.3 million to support 30 Cal Fire fire crews.
• $656 million to bolster fuel resiliency by cleaning up forest floors, increasing prescribed burns and replanting trees.
• $40 million to improve defensible space around homes and to make home-hardening retrofits for the most wildfire-vulnerable low-income Californians.

"Climate change has created a new wildfire reality in California," Newsom wrote in a statement. "With new investments in state-of-the-art firefighting technology and equipment and a focus on building resilience through fuel breaks, forest health projects and home hardening to protect our high-risk communities, the state is more prepared than ever to face wildfire season."

Newsom's plans are still pending approval from the state Legislature, who will likely convene in the next month to make their own negotiations.

4. More Firefighters Will Be Called To Duty This Year

The state last year was shorthanded when it came to staffing fire agencies while dealing with coronavirus-related complications. This year, Cal Fire will add 1,399 seasonal firefighters, many of whom will be called to duty early, Cal Fire Chief Tom Porter said Monday in a briefing with Newsom.

Newsom is also proposing $38.9 million to staff current and three additional Cal Fire crews.

"We have a lot more boots on the ground and the ability to fight fire on that ground now than we did at this time last year," Porter said, adding, "We actually have more firefighters on the ground going into peak season than we ever have before."

Cal Fire has jurisdiction over about 31 million acres across California and is responsible for any fires that crop up in those areas. The U.S. Forest Service is responsible for about 50 percent of California's land.

The Forest Service is short-staffed of its most experienced firefighters, otherwise known as "Hotshots." But Cal Fire isn't, Porter assured reporters on Monday.

"We have had no problem hiring all of the firefighters that we need for this season," he said. "And we're working with our federal counterparts to ensure that they're getting the fills in their critical positions that they need filled as well."