Bigger, tougher fires bring Calif. to the brink

updated 6:44 p.m. ET Aug. 13, 2008

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Faced with hundreds of big, hard-to-control blazes, California is struggling with what could be its most expensive firefighting season ever, burning through $285 million in the last six weeks alone and up to $13 million a day.

With the worst of the fire season still ahead, lawmakers are scrambling to find a way to pay for it all and are considering slapping homeowners with a disaster surcharge that asks those in fire-prone areas to pay the most.

"There is no more fire season as we know it — the fire season is now all year-round," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said while touring wildfires last month in Northern California. "That means that we don't have enough resources."

The crisis comes as California deals with a $15.2 billion budget deficit, and Schwarzenegger cited firefighting costs as a major factor when he ordered wages deferred for state workers and laid off others recently to cut costs.

Fire budgets have been strained across the West because more fires are escaping initial attacks and raging out of control, due largely to drier conditions and thicker brush. Higher fuel and labor costs are also factors.

Living on the edge
And then there are the millions of people who have moved into fire-prone areas throughout the region over the last two decades. Their presence has forced state and federal firefighters to react aggressively to spare lives and property.

A decade ago, California spent $44 million to fight fires for an entire year. The $285 million already spent this fiscal year, which began July 1, is more than a year's worth of firefighting bills in nine of the previous 10 years.

During the first days of July, at the height of the battle against thousands of lightning-sparked fires, California blazed through $13 million a day. That's more than the entire annual firefighting budgets of neighboring Arizona and Nevada.

Under the surcharge proposal, homeowners who live in higher-risk areas would pay the most, which is fine with Gordon Waterbury if the money goes directly to firefighting and not administrative costs.

Waterbury, 55, lived through fires that burned this summer through miles of forest and brush east of Chico, about 90 miles north of the state capital.

"Virtually everyone in California is in high risk," he said recently as he fixed sandwiches for diners at Scooters Cafe in his tiny Sierra foothills town of Jarbo Gap. "It's a statewide problem. It really is."

Emergency funding
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is borrowing money to pay this year's firefighting costs because the state remains without an overall budget.

Video   Firefighting still a deadly job Aug. 10: Eight firefighters and a pilot were killed Tuesday when their helicopter crashed while fighting a wildfire in California. This latest accident is focusing new attention on the growing threat of wildfires, not just to property, but to firefighters themselves. Nightly News

Largely because of the thousands of fires in California this year, the federal firefighting budget will be exhausted this week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Tuesday from Sacramento. Before its budget is replenished, the U.S. Forest Service will be forced to transfer money from other programs to cover firefighting expenses, she said.

Feinstein, D-Calif., is seeking $910 million in emergency funding for the U.S. Forest Service.

Between 1997 and 2007, wildfires burned at least 8,500 square miles in California. That's an area about the size of New Jersey.

Arizona state forester Kirk Rowdabaugh, who co-chaired a national commission in 2004 that examined growing firefighting costs, said 2 percent of all fires account for 98 percent of costs.

"Big fires are costly fires," he said.

Changing face of fire
Fire officials in California and other Western states contain all but about 2 percent of fires before they burn more than a few acres. Until the last few years, firefighting costs increased at about the same pace as the rest of the economy, Rowdabaugh said.

Nationwide, fires burned more than nine million acres last year, costing the federal government $1.4 billion. That was second only to 2006's $1.5 billion, which set the modern record for number of fires, acreage and cost nationwide.

In California, the number of wildfires has declined slightly in recent years, but they burn far more land.

Nevada's firefighting costs have skyrocketed, too, from $2.5 million 10 years ago to $10 million today, about what Arizona spends in a bad fire year.

"California is suffering from the same thing everyone else is," Rowdabaugh said. "Without question, America's fire situation has changed. It's not going to go back."

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