California Fire News - Updates in your mail box
California Fire News - Updates in your mail box |  |
| Earthquake - Magnitude 3.1 - Redlands Posted: 12 Mar 2009 10:33 PM PDT  Earthquake Details
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| Earthquake - Magnitude 3.2 - Morgan Hill Posted: 12 Mar 2009 10:31 PM PDT  Earthquake Details
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| Earthquake - Magnitude 3.3 - Avenal Posted: 12 Mar 2009 10:36 PM PDT  Earthquake Details
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| Budget: CAL FIRE - Mission creep and possible budget cuts Posted: 12 Mar 2009 11:57 AM PDT CalFire General Fund Reductions and DeferralsIncreasing Fire Protection Costs and Mission Creep. CalFire's fire protection budget can be divided between the base budget and the Emergency Fund. The base budget pays for everyday firefighting operations of the department, including salaries, facility maintenance, and other regularly scheduled costs. The Emergency Fund is used to fund unanticipated firefighting costs usually associated with large fire events, including overtime costs for CalFire employees, costs to rent equipment from outside vendors, and costs to reimburse local fire agencies for helping to fight large wildfires. As was mentioned above, CalFire's total General Fund expenditures for fire protection (both the base budget and Emergency Fund, but excluding capital outlay) have more than tripled in ten years—rising from $307 million in 1998–99 to $967 million in the current year. Over the same time period, the General Fund base budget alone has increased from $267 million to more than $530 million—an increase of almost 100 percent in that same decade. Our analysis indicates that CalFire's budget for its core mission of fighting wildland fires has increased so substantially due to the occurrence of larger fires, increased labor costs, and the development of more housing in fire–prone areas. In addition, CalFire spends considerable time and effort responding to non–wildland fire emergencies. Because the department's accounting system does not track the costs for these non–wildland fire calls, we cannot quantify the cost of these noncore mission activities. However, in 2006, department personnel spent about 30 percent of their response time on calls not related to wildland fires. We are concerned that the costs of expanding the mission of CalFire—a phenomenon often referred to as mission creep—are significant. Proposed General Fund Reductions to Fire Protection Budget. Due to the size of the fire protection budget and its dramatic increases in recent years, we believe it is critical to address the spiraling costs of fire protection as one strategy for balancing the 2009–10 budget. In order to do so, we recommend the Legislature reduce the department's General Fund budget for fire protection by $55.1 million in 2009–10 (with $16.8 million in ongoing savings), as follows:
We summarize our proposed reductions in Figure 9.
Potential Impacts to the Emergency Fund. CalFire is unusual in state government, in that the budget act allows the Director of Finance to augment CalFire's budget during the course of the budget year, as needed, to pay for additional, unanticipated costs of fire protection. Due to the nature of wildland fire protection, it is possible that reductions such as we have proposed to the department's base budget may increase the incidence of large fires, thus increasing Emergency Fund expenditures. When the state needs additional resources to battle wildland fires, it calls on federal and local fire agencies for assistance. The state generally reimburses these other fire agencies for the cost of their assistance. However, we believe this is a wise budget trade–off. The cost to use those resources—only when needed—should be less than the cost to keep that capacity in place throughout the fire season. Thus, while additional Emergency Fund expenditures due to the proposed reductions are possible, we would expect that any additional costs would only partially offset the General Fund savings created by our proposal.  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Earthquake 3.5 M - Baja California, Ensenada Posted: 12 Mar 2009 10:21 AM PDT  Earthquake Details
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| CAL FIRE - Arson investigation - Meteorite strikes car Posted: 12 Mar 2009 09:59 AM PDT A meteorite may have been what smashed into the windshield of a Cottonwood couple's sport utility vehicle late last month, destroying much of the dashboard and melting some of the glass. "I hate to say it, but I think something fell out of the sky and did some damage to a car," said Mike Birondo, a fire inspector with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Birondo is used to figuring out the cause of a fire amid soot, ash and other debris, but he said he is perplexed by the amount of destruction apparently caused by an object about the size of a golf ball.  Linda Lang and her boyfriend Richard Orsot stand in front of her Isuzu Trooper that was struck possibly struck by a meteorite February 26th. "I'm frustrated, I wish it didn't happen but what can you do," Lang said who hasn't been asked by officials to leave her truck, their only vehicle, parked until test results come back on the object that left a hole in her windshield. The glass was melted around the hole and the explosion pushed her dashboard towards the back of the car.Nathan Morgan/Record Searchlight  The glass was melted around the hole and the explosion pushed her dashboard towards the back of the car Linda Lang said.Nathan Morgan/Record Searchlight  One of two fragments of an unknown material found in the destroyed dashboard of a Cottonwood couple's car late last month. Thinking it could potentially be part of a meteorite, a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection investigator sent the other piece to a state crime lab in an attempt to determine what it is. Dylan Darling "I can't make heads or tails of it because I haven't experienced something like this," Birondo said. Neither had Richard Orsot, 61, or his girlfriend, Linda Lang, 46, who are learning the reality of doing daily chores - trips to the grocery store and laundromat - without a car because of something that seems out of science fiction. It occurred at 4 a.m. Feb. 26 outside their cottage on Frances Street in Cottonwood. "There was a loud explosion and bright light," Orsot said. Rustled from his sleep, Orsot looked outside but didn't see anything unusual, so he went back to bed. A half-hour later, there were again lights outside the home, this time from flashlights carried by Shasta County sheriff's deputies who were responding to a cluster of 911 calls in the neighborhood - all reporting a startling sound. "It was a big kaboom," said Leroy Bolls, the couple's next-door neighbor. "Like a sonic boom, but real close." He and his wife, Suzie, said the sound was strong enough to shake their house, and they thought a propane tank might have exploded. But the deputies soon found the likely source of the sound. The damage was limited to Lang's 1995 Isuzu Trooper, Orsot said. The SUV was parked in a driveway near the cottage, facing north. Deputies called in Birondo, hoping he could determine what did the damage. "Whatever it was hit with some force and had some heat to it," Birondo said. Having recovered two pieces of a strange material - he can't tell if it's metal or rock, but it doesn't appear to be part of the car - Birondo said he sent one to the state Department of Justice crime laboratory. He hasn't heard back from scientists there on what the material might be. The pieces are black and gray, and very light. The piece Birondo still has at his office weighs 0.07 of a gram. He said he doesn't think the pieces are part of the car because they don't match material in the dash or the interior, where they were found. If they are pieces of a meteorite, or other piece of space debris, it would be a rare find. "Most of the stuff that falls from the sky burns up," said Joe Polen, an astronomy professor at Shasta College. That includes the clouds of debris from a collision of a private U.S. satellite and a decommissioned Russian military communications satellite on Feb. 9. When a meteor becomes a meteorite by making it all the way to the Earth's surface without vaporizing, it can fetch good money. After reports of a big boom and a brilliant yellow streak in the skies of Rockland County, N.Y., early last month, a collector offered $10,000 for a piece of the space rock, according to The Associated Press. Orsot, who said Lang's insurance won't cover the damage to the SUV, said he hopes they can find such a buyer if it turns out to be a meteorite. The couple recently moved from Tulelake. He's on Social Security, and Lang's search for a job has been crimped by having no car. "I don't know how we are going to get this car fixed," Orsot said. Source: Redding.com - Link  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| San Bernardino fire responds to child leg amputation Posted: 12 Mar 2009 09:49 AM PDT Child Trying to Board Moving Train, Loses LegThis morning at 1140am Paramedics from the San Bernardino City Fire Department responded to a call for an injured child in the area of W. Highland Ave and Cajon Blvd.The responding unit found a 12 year old boy laying on the ground near the railroad tracks and being tended to by a bystander. The child had sustained an amputation injury to one of his legs. According to witnesses, the child was attempting to board a moving train along with a friend, when he slipped off and his leg was run over and severed. A bystander came to the aid of the child and slowed the bleeding until Fire Department Paramedics arrived. The child was treated by the SBFD and transported to a local area trauma center. Written and submitted by Jason Serrano, PIO (909) 384-5207  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reappoints Board of Forestry and Fire Protection members Posted: 12 Mar 2009 08:18 AM PDT James Ostrowski, 52, of Mount Shasta, has been reappointed to the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection. He has served on the board since 2005. Ostrowski has served as timberland manager for Timber Products Company since 1994. Previously, he was Mount Shasta's district manager from 1988 to 1994 and a logging engineer for Sierra Pacific Industries from 1983 to 1988. Ostrowski is a member of the Council on Forest Engineering, California Licensed Foresters Association and Society of American Foresters. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Ostrowski is a Republican. Bruce Saito, 57, of Long Beach, has been reappointed to the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection. He has served on the board since 2005. Saito has served as executive director of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps since 1995. Previously, he served as the deputy director of the Corps from 1985 to 1995 and, prior to that, as program manager for the California Conservation Corps from 1976 to 1986. Saito is a member of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Advisory Committee, Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust Board and the Los Angeles Gardening Council and Youth Service California. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Saito is a Democrat.  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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