Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa: We all can help prevent wildfires

Year after year, our region is struck with catastrophic wildfires that ravage our communities, leaving behind a terrible trail of destruction and loss.

These wildfires have become an all-too-familiar menace in the San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties we represent. The names of these infernos still echo in our memories: the Cedar Fire, Harris Fire, Mountain Fire, and the devastating Valley Fire. These blazes have scorched thousands of acres, consumed hundreds of homes, and impacted communities for generations to come — through the rebuilding of neighborhoods, diminishing air and water quality, and the human toll and grief that doesn’t disappear from the lives of fire victims.

We know the first steps to wildfire mitigation are preparation and prevention. Fundamental to both is ensuring we have a skilled and dedicated firefighting force that can answer the call when disaster strikes.

But here is the challenge at hand: We don’t have enough firefighters ready to be deployed, it takes too long to bring them on board, and we need a new era of collaboration with the stakeholders involved to prevent the fires we know are on the way.

In our home state of California, we need to explore new ways to recruit and retain the best wildland firefighting force, and we believe recently introduced Congressional legislation can make a dramatic difference.

The Fair Pay for Federal Firefighters Act (H.R. 4831) will help the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) compete for and add to its ranks the wildland firefighting force it needs right now. On the recruitment side, Direct Hire to Fight Fires (H.R. 3499) allows the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service to streamline the hiring of essential firefighting roles so that no critical staff position is left unfulfilled due to bureaucratic red tape.

Another tactic is to strengthen and expand creative public-private partnerships, including the National Guard’s FireGuard Program, which collects data from a range of sources and sensors, including images derived from satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. Two teams of Army and Air Guard analysts – one in California and another in Colorado – receive this information and monitor remote locations at all hours of the day and night. This makes possible the rapid initial attack of fires when prevention strategies can’t be implemented.

Last year, however, we saw important progress on the firefighting front. We worked with Senators Feinstein and Padilla and our colleagues to include provisions in federal legislation to initiate the transfer of seven C-130s from the U.S. Coast Guard to the State of California for firefighting. The seven new aircraft will join the four National Guard and Air Force Reserve units already operating C-130s to deploy aerial fire retardants and suppress wildfires where crews cannot safely fight on foot or when the area is too remote to reach by vehicle.

Preventing forest fires also means managing the forest floor. In 2023-24, California experienced an especially wet winter that left behind a massive forest overgrowth that brought with it increased hazardous conditions. The next step is for the USFS to work with public and private landowners to prioritize removal of this “fire fuel” before it dries out by using tactics including forest thinning, prescribed fires, and construction of strategically placed fuel breaks. Outdated land management practices combined with dead and dying forests are a ticking time bomb.

We also recommend that the USFS complete the process of mapping fuel breaks across federal, state, and private lands. Sharing this information with all parties involved will maximize fuel reduction projects for adjacent communities and the entire forest landscape.

While wildfire season may be an annual occurrence, we will be best served by developing and implementing tools, partnerships, and practices 365 days a year. We are committed to working with the full spectrum of our essential wildfire stakeholders to champion better pay for wildland firefighters, enhanced public-private partnerships, and increased access to wildfire suppression resources. We have lots of work to do together.

Ken Calvert and Darrell Issa serve in the House of Representatives.