2018 Wildfire Season

[neufox47]

I dunno man, they are stuck in a Walmart parking lot with no money, no insurance, nothing, and hundreds of people burnt to death back where they lived. It won't be abandoned completely but I don't see it really becoming anything close to what I'd call 'rebuilt'

Idk how you can live in Paradise and not have wildfire insurance. Maybe if you are a renter, but that is crazy as a homeowner unless you have a few million in the bank.

Most policies will pay for you to rebuild at another site. Not sure if you can buy a home and call it replacement though.

[bodywhomper]

Idk how you can live in Paradise and not have wildfire insurance. Maybe if you are a renter, but that is crazy as a homeowner unless you have a few million in the bank.

Or you own your home outright and can’t afford insurance.

Paradise was 100% septic (including the industrial and commercial areas). The town made real motions to establish a municipal system. All political folks approving that idea were voted out. Paradise Irrigation District was proceeding with a water treatment plant improvement project to halt violations and large fees from effluent via the clean water act. All their BOD that approved that project were voted out (some thru special election). Those transitions in elected officials occurred because the voters felt that they could not afford those infrastructure upgrade projects.

Hutash, do you think your home burned down from the inside, ie interior items catching fire due to the heat that was outside?

[bodywhomper]

I know some people that plan to return. Public servant, artist, social activist types.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using TGR Forums mobile app

[muted]

maybe all the previous residents won’t return but as busy as California is and how Chico has grown by leaps and bounds, i can’t see why folks won’t move there once it becomes feasible to rebuild. just my opinion after all

Right, and I'm just spitballin' too, and from many miles away...

I know some people that plan to return. Public servant, artist, social activist types.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using TGR Forums mobile app

Oh god, nobody will move back now.

[Dantheman]

Idk how you can live in Paradise and not have wildfire insurance.

See: Masses of homeowners in low lying areas of Houston/Louisiana/etc. who didn't have flood insurance.

[SumJongGuy]

It's a catch 22 with high risk property being priced significantly lower than low risk property.. But, the insurance is extremely expensive, assuming you can actually get it (see previous rant about federally subsidized National Flood Insurance for big money beach houses).

[old goat]

Where will they find builders to rebuild Paradise? Even the people who have insurance will find themselves woefully underinsured.
If Paradise is rebuilt it won't be for the folks who lived there before the fire.
A lot of those folks will wind up leaving the state. A lot of them will die before the place is rebuilt.
And I know raking by itself won't do much good but I wish my neighbors would rake their pine needles.

[SumJongGuy]

Where will they find builders to rebuild Paradise? Even the people who have insurance will find themselves woefully underinsured.
If Paradise is rebuilt it won't be for the folks who lived there before the fire.
A lot of those folks will wind up leaving the state. A lot of them will die before the place is rebuilt.
And I know raking by itself won't do much good but I wish my neighbors would rake their pine needles.

Full scale disaster didn't stop people from rebuilding the 9th Ward of New Orleans after Katrina.. still with no flood insurance. There are about 3-4 people I know around town who came here right before or right after Katrina and never went back. Cheap property and the allure of owning your own home is too tempting even with the elevated risks and sans insurance.

[TAFKALVS]

AQI 181 Oakland

those are rookie numbers, we had AQI of 400+ a few times this summer.

[4matic]

Right. 181 is good news now. Wind picks up tomorrow.

[plugboots]

Finland is having a good laugh at our trumpster.
Also, anybody see this article in Artsy about a wildfire photographer?
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-...ting-wildfires


I found it just below the Kinkaid article linked in that thread.

[DJSapp]

OG there are plenty of builders in Chico that will be itching to get their hammers nailing new wood for the next generation that will reside in Paradise.

No, there aren't. There is a massive shortage of builders in CA right now, as there is a construction boom and a massive labor shortage (thanks Trump). Also, the homes in Napa and Sonoma are just barely getting started rebuilding after last year's fire. It's going to be 2020 before Paradise is close to cleaned up enough to start rebuilding.

[hutash]

Hutash, do you think your home burned down from the inside, ie interior items catching fire due to the heat that was outside?

Could very well have, but from pictures I saw from the fire department one street upwind from me, houses on both sides were and absolute inferno, and I don't see how any house down wind could survive it. Amazingly they finally got resources onto our street and made a defensive kine and managed to save a few houses. Unfortunately I was on the wrong side of that tline.

Just like in hurricanes builders will show up and rebuild. Not all are honest, and prices have gone way up in our area, and Paradise will only be worse. Most of the hermit types who lived in Paradise went rebuild, but there will be plenty of people willing to buy lots and build custom homes. Some wag said a fire can only improve Paradise, and to a certain extent that will be true. A bunch of cheap or modest homes will get replaced with bigger and better homes, kind of a forced gentrification.

Nobody in my neighborhood is building down. They are all building custom, and in the end will bring up property values even for the older track homes.

Insurance pay outs are yours to do what you please with. Rebuild at the old site, build on a new site, but something entirely different, but a yurt in the wilderness and ski...its all good. We kicked around a lot of options, including taking the money and running, but in the end we like where we live, and currently have no desire to live anywhere else.

[old goat]

No, there aren't. There is a massive shortage of builders in CA right now, as there is a construction boom and a massive labor shortage (thanks Trump). Also, the homes in Napa and Sonoma are just barely getting started rebuilding after last year's fire. It's going to be 2020 before Paradise is close to cleaned up enough to start rebuilding.

They're still trying to rebuild after Sandy, although at least with the Camp Fire there isn't much left to haul away.

Good luck to survivors trying to prove their loved ones are dead. OTOH if you survived the fire and owe a lot of money to drug dealers this might be a good time to disappear.

After big natural disasters the pain goes on long after the TV cameras and FEMA trailers are gone, off to the next one.

[hutash]

No, there aren't. There is a massive shortage of builders in CA right now, as there is a construction boom and a massive labor shortage (thanks Trump). Also, the homes in Napa and Sonoma are just barely getting started rebuilding after last year's fire. It's going to be 2020 before Paradise is close to cleaned up enough to start rebuilding.

I can't speak for notCal, but there is no shortage of builders here in soCal. Things can be a bit slow as a contra tour has to finish one job before the next, but everybody I talk to has not had a problem lini g up builders. My neighborhood is going full tilt. I agree though, it will probably be well over a year before things really happen in Butte County. I doubt they have the resources for building on this scale. It has stretched us down here, and we have pretty sizable permitting departments. Clean up will likely go reasonably fast. After Napa the state wished up to the environmental impact of the fires and really ratcheted up the clean up. Within days of the fire there was a state clean up crew getting people to sign up. Once they convinced enough people to sign up they started bring in resources, and had everything 8n our area clean and certified in a few months. The more people who signed up, the more crews they put to work. That way they knew the clean up was done right and safely, and monitor well. Pretty amazing system acctually.and I have to give props to the state. It was paid for by insurance month and federal disaster funds.

[glademaster]

This all could have been avoided if they had just paved it and put up a parking lot.

It will be interesting to see if/when/how the town is rebuilt, but I would wager it will have a larger effect on the demographics of the area and will take longer than anticipated.

Talk about a nightmare. If I was still working for my previous jurisdiction, I would be figuring out how to spend a few weeks there helping assess structures and expedite repairs/replacements. Their Community Development Department has a long history of encouraging staff to head to disaster areas to volunteer. Not the case with my current municipality.

[LightRanger]

DJS is correct re builders in Northern California. (He's in the industry, IIRC. And lives in the Sac area.) Santa Rosa fires sucked a lot of them over there. Rebuilding in the North Bay is north of $300 sqft now. Sure, Butte County is a bit of a different market, but given the need, supply and demand is pretty regional.

In other news, I'm definitely going to up my coverage limits.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[ill-advised strategy]

I wrote this in college 10 years ago. I feel like there's some relevance to recent discussion.

US Forest Service Firefighting:
Misplaced Priorities, Misappropriated Funds

In recent years, sometimes several times a year, large wildland fires have captured the attention of the nation at large. Dramatic images of lost lives and burnt homes grab headlines, while shock waves of exhausted budgets and shifted priorities ripple through the land management agencies. Open fire on our nation’s public lands is hardly a new phenomenon; however, catastrophic fire emergencies of national significance have increased in frequency over the last decade. Century-old policies tying wildland fire suppression responsibilities to the function of forestry are becoming outdated as fire intensity has increased and wild lands have become interspersed with development. Ever-increasing numbers of fire emergencies on the National Forests have stretched the US Forest Service thin, pulling funding and personnel from other functions (Attias; Hughes; Milstein). Leaving emergency management in the control of an agency designed to handle forestry has led to both poor forestry and poor emergency management. To best serve the public, the US Forest Service should relinquish its fire suppression mission to local emergency management agencies.

Over most of North American history, range and forest fire was accepted as part of the natural landscape. As western populations expanded in the early 1900s, several tragic outcomes from unsuppressed wildland fires spurred the young US Forest Service to assume fire suppression as a mission, with dispersed efforts nationwide coalescing into a national program over the first decades of the agency. With occasional and notable exceptions, fighting wildland fire on the national forests through the 20th century was a job dissimilar to fighting fire in an urban environment. Wildland fires posing imminent threat to civilian lives and private property were exceptional. The vast majority of wildland fire incidents were not emergencies as such, and suppression work on those fires was appropriately considered an extension of forestry. In the first decades of the Forest Service, fires were fought by all agency employees as a collateral duty, rather than by firefighters per se. The vast majority of Forest fires remained isolated from population centers and fires were handled less as an imminent emergency and more as a matter of timber resource management (Pyne 3-4; Aplet). Times have changed; in 2009, 1 in 3 Forest Service employees are wildland firefighters, and 42% of the agency’s 2010 budget is allocated to firefighting (United States “Overview” 14;”Fiscal” I1) .

The National Forests have undergone major changes in the last century of aggressive fire suppression. Modern foresters and ecologists understand the role of periodic fire in maintaining forest health. Ironically, fire suppression in most forest ecosystems leads to a buildup of flammable undergrowth, drastically intensifying the fires that eventually occur (Grahame and Thomas). Drought has stressed timber while pine-bark beetle infestations have spread throughout the west (Johnson; Meerik). National Interagency Fire Center statistics show that several of the most severe fire seasons in US history have occurred in the last 10 years, with several consecutive season totals approaching an unprecedented 10 million acres (U.S. NIFC).

While the National Forests have undergone changes, the lands adjacent to public forests have also undergone significant changes. The numbers of residents under potential threat from wildland fires on US Forest Service land has skyrocketed (“United States Housing”; US DOA and US DOI). Expanding suburbs have pushed ever closer to National Forest boundaries, the aesthetic appeal of forested property frequently taking priority over exposure to devastating wildland fire. Populated areas intermingled with areas of wildland fuels, collectively known as the wildland-urban-interface (or WUI), have proven a significant problem for both wildland fire management agencies and emergency management agencies. Efforts to mitigate WUI fire hazards to residents and firefighters have been undertaken nationwide, with varying levels of success (Nasiatka and Christensen “Wildland Urban”).

With a combination of increasing frequency of extreme fire behavior in the National Forests, and increasing public exposure to wildland fire, comes a dramatic increase in fire incidents which must be treated as emergency situations. Tactical approaches to engaging a wildland fire threatening life and/or private property differ significantly from approaches to a wildland fire threatening strictly or mostly natural resource values. We can see the results of those differences by comparing two similar fires: the Krassel Complex and the Castle Rock fire, both occurring in the mountains of central Idaho in September of 2007. The 56,000 acre Krassel Complex showed a more traditional model of the Forest Service fire: on Sept. 17th it was staffed with 73 personnel, 4 crews, a helicopter, and had a cumulative cost to the taxpayer of $2.1 million—the major values at risk being timber and several structures. The Castle Rock fire, however, threatened hundreds of homes and businesses in the WUI area surrounding Ketchum, ID; its 48,000 acres being staffed by 1517 personnel, 41 hand crews, 90 fire engines, and 19 helicopters, at a cost 10 times that of the Krassel (NIFC 1).

Under current operating principles, WUI fires require an abundance of staff from both traditional emergency management (structural fire departments, law enforcement, and emergency medical resources) and wildland-fire-specific resources (hotshot crews, helitack, wildland fire engines and incident management teams) due to the inability of either side to do the work of the other (National Wildfire “Fire Operations” p1.11). Much greater efficiency in operations could be achieved simply by integrating functions, so that all firefighters are trained to handle structure fire, wildland fire, medical emergencies, crash rescue, hazardous materials and coordination with law enforcement agencies.

The duplication of effort goes beyond individual incidents. The split between wildland fire management and emergency management is a jackpot of duplicated effort at the program level. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth’s testimony before Congress in 2006 indicates the agency’s 2005 push toward administrative consolidation saved taxpayers $241 million (par 8). These savings have been achieved by integrating duplicated efforts within the Forest Service; yet these savings represent a small portion of what could be saved by consolidating duplication of effort across agency lines, integrating such functions as program administration, dispatching, information management, fleet management, budgeting and accounting, training, and human resource management.

tbc...

[ill-advised strategy]

cont:

To understand the Forest Service fire organization, one must recognize a major fundamental challenge of wildland fire management: efficiently allocating the down time associated with wildland fire. During severe seasons, with many ongoing fires, Forest Service fire resources are fully utilized in their designated roles; yet the seasonal and sporadic nature of these events dictates that most wildland firefighters will spend a significant amount of work time unassigned to fire incidents, and at times see long waits between responses. Currently, rather than serving in other kinds of emergency response when not engaged with wildland fire, Forest Service wildland firefighters build trail, cut and plant trees, maintain campgrounds, and perform any number of basic maintenance functions on Forest Service lands and facilities (Prentiss 3).

Using fire personnel as the catch-all work crew in the National Forests creates significant issues. Forest Service fire personnel who spend most of their work time doing forestry work have much less practice with emergency situations than even firefighters in relatively low-call-volume fire departments. A cursory Google search of “fire department call volume” allows one to scan call volumes for fire departments across the U.S. The low end of these figures is in the neighborhood of 50 emergency responses per year, while the higher end is in the thousands of responses per year. Surveying 15 wildland firefighters with tenure ranging from a decade to retired after 30 plus years of wildland fire service indicated career totals averaging 15-30 wildland incidents per year. With only a portion of wildland fire incidents being emergencies, clearly traditional emergency management organizations provide a better training platform for emergency response and offer personnel more opportunity to maintain acquired skill sets.

With a relative abundance of fire personnel and funding, a considerable amount of the Forest Service’s need for basic labor is being filled by highly-trained individuals hired, trained, and paid as firefighters. The difference in taxpayer cost between sending a $20,000 pickup truck with laborers to complete a basic task versus sending a fire-ready $100,000 emergency vehicle with firefighters is significant. Also significant is the overall lack of firefighter interest in and dedication to the work of forestry. Trail crews pride themselves on expert trail building, groundskeepers pride themselves on skilled landscaping; firefighters pride themselves on firefighting. Project work fills down time, serves agency objectives, and supports physical fitness but is frequently not undertaken with an adequate degree of task ownership. Additionally, with such an emphasis on project work, personnel may advance in the organization based on an aptitude for project work rather than an aptitude for firefighting, creating a chain of command unprepared to function optimally in emergency situations.

When the public funds a Forest Service fire position, they get a firefighter who makes a firefighting wage but spends most days working as a laborer rather than responding to, or even being available to respond to most public emergencies. Taxpayers purchase, stock, staff, and maintain Forest Service fire equipment that is not made available to assist with crash rescue or structural fire. Most of what the public gets from these expenditures is very expensive transportation for very expensive laborers to and from poorly executed busy work.

Structural fire departments, by contrast, partake in a wide variety of emergency response throughout the year, remaining sharp with standard procedures while developing and maintaining a holistic fluency with emergency situations. Under the current model most of the Forest Service firefighters managing the first significant forest fire of any given season have not been involved in a single fire response in the 5 or 6 month winter off-season. Incorporating Forest Service fires into emergency management’s mission would ensure that every incident is managed and staffed by personnel who have been responding to a variety of emergencies on a continuing and ongoing basis throughout their careers.

It is a fundamentally simpler proposition to ask emergency management organizations to apply their expertise to wildland fire than to continue relying on a forestry agency to adequately manage large emergencies. The public should have a reasonable expectation of well-rounded firefighters capable of handling all phases of the complex emergencies that exist in the modern Wildland Urban Interface. The public should also demand a forest service unencumbered by the budgetary and organizational demands of firefighting. In seeking to improve both emergency management and forestry service to the public, the path is clear: the US Forest Service must focus on forestry, and the emergency management agencies must absorb responsibility for firefighting on the National Forests.

Works Cited

Aplet, Gregory H. “Evolution of Wilderness Fire Policy.” International Journal of Wilderness. 12.1 (2006):
9-13. Web. 9 Nov 2009.
Attias, Melissa. "Cash vs. Ash: A Losing Battle." CQ Weekly. 67.33 (2009): 1936. Academic Search
Premier. EBSCO. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.
Bosworth, Dale. Testimony: Statement of Chief Dale Bosworth United States Department of Agriculture
Forest Service Before the United States Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Concerning the Forest Service Fiscal Year 2007 Budget. 28 Feb. 2006. USDA Forest Service. Web. 9 Nov. 2009. <http://www.fs.fed.us/congress/109/senate/budgetary/bosworth/022806.html>
“Forest Profiles: Ranotta McNair, Idaho Panhandle Forests Supervisor.” Forest Profiles. Idaho Forest
Products Commission. n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.
<http://www.idahoforests.org/profiles/mcnair.htm>
Grahame, John D. and Thomas D. Sisk, ed. 2002. “Wildfire History and Ecology on the Colorado Plateau.”
Canyons, cultures and environmental change: An introduction to the land-use history of the Colorado Plateau. 5 Nov. 2009. <http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/Biota/wildfire.htm>.
Hughes, Trevor. "Fire season forces $400M in cuts at Forest Service." USA Today. n.d. Academic Search
Premier. EBSCO. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.
Johnson, Kirk. "Beetles Add New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts." New York Times. 28 June 2009:
21. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 Nov. 2009.
Meerik, Dave. “Fire Behaviour [sic]/Safety in Mountain Pine Beetle Killed Lodgepole Pine Stands in
British Columbia.” IAWF Conferences. International Association of Wildland Fire. Web. 5 Nov. 2009. <http://www.iawfonline.org/summit/2003.php>
Milstein, Michael. "Firefighting burns through forest funds." The Oregonian. 11 Aug. 2008. ProQuest.
Web. 9 Nov. 20
Nasiatka, Paula, and Christenson, Dave. "Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Lessons Learned." Scratchline.
7 May 2007: 1-7. Web. 31 Oct 2009.
<http://www.wildfirelessons.net/documents/Scratchline_Issue19.pdf>.
---. "Line Officer Lessons Learned." Scratchline. 27 Nov 2006: 1-8. Web. 31 Oct 2009.
<http://www.wildfirelessons.net/docum...ne_Issue18.pdf >.
National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG). Fire Operations in the Wildland/Urban Interface: S-215
Student Guide. Boise, ID. NFES. 2003. Print.
Prentiss, Matt. Wyoming Hotshot Summary Report: 2009 Fire Season. 15 Oct. 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2009.
<www.wyominghotshots.com/files/2009_annual_report.doc>.
Pyne, Stephen J. "An Exchange for All Things? An Inquiry into the Scholarship of Fire." Australian
Geographical Studies 39.1 (2001): 1. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2009.
Reardon, John A. "Unified Command and Shifting Priorities." Fire Engineering 158.8 (2005): 75-78.
Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.
Salt Lake County, Utah. “District 2: Michael H. Jensen.” Salt Lake County. n.d. Web. 8 Nov.2009.
<http://www.council.slco.org/html/mJensen.html>.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and U.S. Dept. of the Interior. 2001. “Urban Wildland Interface
Communities Within The Vicinity Of Federal Lands That Are At High Risk From Wildfire.” Federal Register 66: 751.
U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. Forest Service. Fiscal Year 2010 President’s Budget Overview. n.d.
USDA Forest Service, Web. 31 Oct 2009. <http://www.fs.fed.us/publications/budget-2010/overview-fy-2010-budget-request.pdf>.
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Interagency Fire Center. Web. 31 Oct 2009. <http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/fire_stats.htm >.
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National Interagency Fire Center. Web. 4 Nov. 2009. <http://www.nifc.gov/nicc/IMSR/2007/20070902IMSR.pdf>.
“United States Housing Density Maps and Data: animate 1940-2030.” Map. Housing Density Data. Dept.
of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, SILVIS Lab, University of Wisconsin Madison. n. d. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. <ftp://forest.wisc.edu/SILVIS/data/Maps/anim_gif/US_pbg00_1940-2030.gif>.

[DJSapp]

I can't speak for notCal, but there is no shortage of builders here in soCal. Things can be a bit slow as a contra tour has to finish one job before the next, but everybody I talk to has not had a problem lini g up builders. My neighborhood is going full tilt. I agree though, it will probably be well over a year before things really happen in Butte County. I doubt they have the resources for building on this scale. It has stretched us down here, and we have pretty sizable permitting departments. Clean up will likely go reasonably fast. After Napa the state wished up to the environmental impact of the fires and really ratcheted up the clean up. Within days of the fire there was a state clean up crew getting people to sign up. Once they convinced enough people to sign up they started bring in resources, and had everything 8n our area clean and certified in a few months. The more people who signed up, the more crews they put to work. That way they knew the clean up was done right and safely, and monitor well. Pretty amazing system acctually.and I have to give props to the state. It was paid for by insurance month and federal disaster funds.

The cleanup will go fairly quickly as the Federal ambulance chaser contractors will chase that down for the hazmat cleanup. The rebuilding... Butte County has like, dozens of employees. The permitting alone for rebuilding 6,000+ homes will take years. Nevermind the persistent labor shortage in NorCal. We've been hiring help from NV, UT, CO, ID, MT, etc. because the union halls are empty. Lots of the non-union hands working commercial and residential have noticed and are taking the opportunity to move into the unions, straining the builders. Probably not as noticeable when insurance is footing the bill, but prices are going up to reflect this.

This all could have been avoided if they had just paved it and put up a parking lot.

Sadly not as much as you think it would. Everyone was amazed when the K-mart in Santa Rosa burned last year. Surrounded by parking lot, concrete building, etc. Didn't stand a chance. Firestorm means a cat 1 hurricane, but instead of rain coming in sideways at 75+ mph, it's sparks, embers and heat. Building are absolutely chock full of flammable stuff, and once they start they don't stop until they're gone.

[zion zig zag]

Sadly not as much as you think it would. Everyone was amazed when the K-mart in Santa Rosa burned last year. Surrounded by parking lot, concrete building, etc. Didn't stand a chance. Firestorm means a cat 1 hurricane, but instead of rain coming in sideways at 75+ mph, it's sparks, embers and heat. Building are absolutely chock full of flammable stuff, and once they start they don't stop until they're gone.

Don't worry Glademaster, I got your Joni Mitchell joke.

[DJSapp]

Don't worry Glademaster, I got your Joni Mitchell joke.

I got the joke too, it's just beating a dead horse here. Paving everything has kept South Central LA pretty safe from wildfires, you just need 40 miles of defensible space.

[zion zig zag]

Interested to hear why Zion Zig Zag's structure agency is having issues retaining fire fighters. Where do people go when they leave the structure world?

Unfortunately, it's not unique to my department, or even my state. It's a widespread problem. Some of the reasons below are speculation, but best guesses.

1. Utah state changed our retirement. Everyone hired before 2011 gets 50% of their average 3 highest paid years, at 20 years. Post 2011, work for 25 years to get 37.5 percent.

2. Reality: every 20 yo that starts the job pictures themselves running out of a house ripping off their face piece with a baby under both arms and saving lives on multi-trauma car wrecks. And while those calls do happen, they are few and far between. The norm is being up all night long running on cold homeless people, folks who've had a headache for three days and those having panic attacks. And even on fires, for every minute you spend cutting a hole in the roof or doing a room to room victim search, you spend 10 minutes draining and loading 5" hose. It's just hard work, and for whatever reason, the millennial's move on when the excitement of driving lights and sirens wears off.

3. Every city is in the same boat of being short staffed. And while the arms-pay race is great for getting raises, cities that lack funding can't keep up. So your best and brightest are constantly being recruited by the bigger city next door. And lately, by Vegas/LA/Seattle.

4. The job market is great. And here in Utah, tech pays awesome. My wife works in tech and she works directly with several young guys who will tell her upon learning that her husband is a FF, "oh, that's cool, I was a firefighter for a few years". Like I said, that used to be unheard of, this was a career, and now it's something to do while you get a degree in something else.

5. It's a combo of all of the above and more.

[ill-advised strategy]

Man, I hate reading that. Structure guys in utah guns and hoses back 10 years ago were really happy.

[XXX-er]

https://www.google.com/search?q=fort...ient=firefox-b

big fire in ft mac 2 years ago, 2400 buildings burned, fortunately nobody was killed (the car accident doesnt count) when it came to the rebuilding some local carps made the 20hr drive to pound nails