The recent fire activity in Siskiyou, Shasta, and Trinity Counties indicate that 2023 will not be immune from a significant fire season. CAL FIRE, local sheriff's departments, and U.S. Forest Service agencies will release important information regarding fire behavior, evacuation notices, community updates, and shelter locations. My office and staff will pass along these updates so that more people will see them as we receive them for fire incidents that warrant evacuations. As of now, the Eillis, Ufish, and Deep fires remain the primary concerns. These fires are located in difficult terrain that requires small, tactical crews to go in and combat them.
Knowing if you are in a zone that is under an evacuation warning or order is critical to the evacuation process. To find out what zone you live in, and whether or not you are under an evacuation order or warning, go to community.zonehaven.com and enter your address or Zone ID into the search bar. You will immediately be able to see if your zone is under any evacuation orders or warnings, as well as get information related to evacuation points, traffic control points, zone information, and signup links to other useful services like CodeRed.
Remember, if your zone is under an Evacuation Warning, you must be prepared to evacuate your home at a moment's notice. Should this Warning be upgraded to an Evacuation Order, then you need to get out immediately.
Protecting Wildland Firefighter PayWildland firefighters have been performing much of the heavy lifting in combatting much of the August fires in Siskiyou County. Day in and day out, wildland firefighters risk their lives and health to combat wildfires in remote areas of Northern California. Without them, we would all be at far greater risk of wildfire and these blazes would burn thousands more acres of forested lands before reaching populated areas. The role that wildland firefighters play in fire suppression cannot be overstated.
Congress recognized this, and authorized a temporary pay increase as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This was supposed to give them a well-deserved pay increase for the next five years while Congress debated and worked out a more permanent solution. Unfortunately, due to agency mismanagement and the failure of the Biden Administration to budget responsibly, the funds for this pay increase will run out 3 years early at the end of September. It always seems as though our first responders are some of the first to get the short end of the stick when the Administration messes up or doesn’t budget and plan properly.
It's critical that this does not happen. Wildland firefighters should not have to endure a huge pay cut because of the mistakes and irresponsibility of federal bureaucrats. To spur Congress to get the ball moving on this issue, I introduced the Fair Pay For Federal Firefighters Act to make sure they get adequate pay by repurposing funds from elsewhere to maintain fiscal responsibility. This bill establishes a new base pay rate scale, with the largest increases in pay going to firefighters at the lowest end of the scale. It also increases deployment bonuses to incentivize firefighters to deploy to a fire camp to respond to fire outbreaks in remote areas. Federal firefighter pay would be propped up for two more years as this is still only a temporary solution. Congress needs to actually negotiate a permanent solution to this problem, such as a long-term plan for setting firefighters' hourly wage to an appropriate and acceptable level. The bill has received broad support from Members of Congress and was cosponsored by Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse. I am hopeful to see this bill passed and signed by the President before the end of September and avoid impending pay cuts to our federal firefighters. To add insult to injury, we discovered very poor quality food was being served to those same firefighters by a national one-size-fits-all food vendor. We called for a change in food service and US Forest Service did respond and changed firefighters' food sources to one that is suitable for our frontline firefighters battling to save our forests and towns.
Knowing if you are in a zone that is under an evacuation warning or order is critical to the evacuation process. To find out what zone you live in, and whether or not you are under an evacuation order or warning, go to community.zonehaven.com and enter your address or Zone ID into the search bar. You will immediately be able to see if your zone is under any evacuation orders or warnings, as well as get information related to evacuation points, traffic control points, zone information, and signup links to other useful services like CodeRed.
Remember, if your zone is under an Evacuation Warning, you must be prepared to evacuate your home at a moment's notice. Should this Warning be upgraded to an Evacuation Order, then you need to get out immediately.
Protecting Wildland Firefighter PayWildland firefighters have been performing much of the heavy lifting in combatting much of the August fires in Siskiyou County. Day in and day out, wildland firefighters risk their lives and health to combat wildfires in remote areas of Northern California. Without them, we would all be at far greater risk of wildfire and these blazes would burn thousands more acres of forested lands before reaching populated areas. The role that wildland firefighters play in fire suppression cannot be overstated.
Congress recognized this, and authorized a temporary pay increase as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This was supposed to give them a well-deserved pay increase for the next five years while Congress debated and worked out a more permanent solution. Unfortunately, due to agency mismanagement and the failure of the Biden Administration to budget responsibly, the funds for this pay increase will run out 3 years early at the end of September. It always seems as though our first responders are some of the first to get the short end of the stick when the Administration messes up or doesn’t budget and plan properly.
It's critical that this does not happen. Wildland firefighters should not have to endure a huge pay cut because of the mistakes and irresponsibility of federal bureaucrats. To spur Congress to get the ball moving on this issue, I introduced the Fair Pay For Federal Firefighters Act to make sure they get adequate pay by repurposing funds from elsewhere to maintain fiscal responsibility. This bill establishes a new base pay rate scale, with the largest increases in pay going to firefighters at the lowest end of the scale. It also increases deployment bonuses to incentivize firefighters to deploy to a fire camp to respond to fire outbreaks in remote areas. Federal firefighter pay would be propped up for two more years as this is still only a temporary solution. Congress needs to actually negotiate a permanent solution to this problem, such as a long-term plan for setting firefighters' hourly wage to an appropriate and acceptable level. The bill has received broad support from Members of Congress and was cosponsored by Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse. I am hopeful to see this bill passed and signed by the President before the end of September and avoid impending pay cuts to our federal firefighters. To add insult to injury, we discovered very poor quality food was being served to those same firefighters by a national one-size-fits-all food vendor. We called for a change in food service and US Forest Service did respond and changed firefighters' food sources to one that is suitable for our frontline firefighters battling to save our forests and towns.
