California Wildfires

Facing a mental health crisis, Cal Fire crews sought less of a workload. But they have to wait two years under their new contract.

Moderate weather and well-timed rainstorms in much of California combined to curb the acreage and structures burned.

Cal Fire faces a mental health crisis. As wildfires burn year-round, thousands of overworked California firefighters carry a heavy load of trauma, pain and grief. They leave a fire but the fire never leaves them.

Strong and stoic, a Cal Fire captain fought wildland fires and helped retrieve the bodies of despondent people who had jumped off a remote bridge. When the bridge beckoned him, he couldn’t keep fighting.

“I felt trapped.” For months, a firefighter kept reliving her colleagues' screams when a Mendocino County wildfire encircled them. On the day she planned to take her life, she got help instead — just in time.

About 10% of Cal Fire’s workforce quit the agency last year. “We are at critical mass, guaranteed,” one Cal Fire captain said. Workers’ comp cases for PTSD are routinely denied, and many crews are fatigued from working weeks at a time with no time off.

From housing and health to transportation and education, the Legislative Analyst’s Office provides a litany of sobering climate change impacts for California legislators to address as they enact policies and set budgets.

Regulators approved “seriously deficient” fire prevention plans, including from PG&E, which sparked California's deadliest wildfire, state auditor says.

A preliminary estimate shows that the Caldor Fire cost tens of millions in lost economic activity. Wildfires, and the economic disruption they cause, have a large economic impact. But right now, California has a mostly incomplete picture of how much fires cost the state each year.

Fire officials are bracing for the worst as scientists predict that climate change could cause more lightning strikes, which often ignite deadly, unpredictable and remote wildfires in Northern California.