State legislators Thursday heard testimony that preparation for California’s new era of catastrophic and deadly wildland fires will require costly changes to land management, building safety and firefighting services, amounting to a wholesale upgrade of the state’s firefighting force.
“We have to increase our pace and scale of everything we’re doing,” Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state Office of Emergency Services, told the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee. “We need to seriously look at the resources and our capacity for what we do today to prepare for the next 20 years.”
It was the second hearing of the week for a senate committee regarding the 2017 Northern and Southern California fires and mudslides. Tuesday, senators heard nine fire chiefs, including Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner, talk of the terrible challenges of battling the fires. The chiefs also asked for $100 million annually to staff more dispatchers, firefighters and equipment at times of high fire danger.