Interesting fact… Based on the crew order for this incident and CF having 48 crews unstaffed presently…Antelope inc. will employ just under 15% of available state crews.
Awww yes the elephant in the room that has not been exposed with such a slow summer. Keep your heads buried in the sand and telling us everything is fine, the crew shortage isn’t a big deal
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What is the fix thought? Everyone knows its an issue but its not an CF issue, its an issue caused by prop 47. So unless a new proposition goes to the voters reversing prop 47, what is the fix to the problem?
*MODs may want to split this into it’s own thread.
I agree 100% it’s not CFs fault, and I dont have a solution either. Just alot of frustration in the field that were watching the program(which is the backbone of the department in fire & fuels work) bleed to death and the company line(cdcr) is everything is fine the numbers are there.
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Talk to someone in finance and ask them how much a Gulf S/T cost when ALL the costs are added into the equation
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Paid Crews??
Funny. Got 4 crews in most camps but no captains to fill them due to vacation. Not because prop 47.
Not sure where, maybe at an original 4 crew camps, but the 5 and 6 crew camps that are down to 4, people are tripping over eachother.
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@Green64331 and @IAfire
It is not just prop 47, also ab109 and some cdcr rollout of plan implimentation flaws crossed with institution politics.
And is definitely NOT because of lack of FCB’s.
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If all the inmates that use to be used on crews have been pushed down onto the counties, Maybe Calfire should cough up some money and let the county fire departments start running crews with local inmates.
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a bigger picture than presented. only state inmate crews are CalFire, LaCounty with adult s and Ventura with YA, as far as I know.lots of contracts and commitments to get state inmate crews. Just does not happen overnight… but would be nice to see. inmate crews are a great resource. Ran those crews for a lot of years. they do a great job and are a excellent resource.
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The other elephant in the room is the reclassification of inmate’s. Those that were level 1& 2 at state level got pushed down to counties. Some counties do in fact have inmate crews. The problem with county programs is each is run differently and there are use/travel restrictions based on the county they are housed in.
There seems to be several problems
- AB109, Prop 47 & 57 realignment
- Level 3 & 4 being reclassified as Level 2 & 3
- Historically, inmates were in the program 24-30 months and weren’t eligible unless they had less than 48 months remaining on their sentencing. Today, the avg time in camp is 90-120 days with the rare occasion of 12 months or more
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not sure of new gov. regs; but years past, LA County had to drop their county crews due to early release programs. LA County crews only responded to fires within LA Co. They where ran by what we called Dinosaur Crew Supervisors (mostly USFS exs). They were some of the best and past on some great experience. Was blessed to have worked with them.
Inmate crews are and have been a great resource and will be. hopefully will be tapped into. be aware of the early release programs of county and even state. hard to keep crews up to standards when they are gone within a few months. was the end of LACounty inmate camp program (not state inmates…but county). hard to keep crews up to par when they are released in days of being trained…
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Prop 47 or no just hire regular handcrews pay them decently and it will cost about the same as a g crew. It costs fs more to pay a con crew than a hotshot crew on an incident.
This guy knows
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Why? What is the status of Golf ST’s? Are they short staffed this year, due to everything?
A lot of the northern camps closed down due to covid
Oh, ok. The interesting thing is that this is essentially the only fire that’s potentially going campaign. I’m Fed FF. I know that the Fed’s are also dealing with serious staffing issues. Another new development is that, due to over 20 firefighters either having covid or being isolated, Santa Barbara County isn’t supporting any out of county strike teams right now. I’m sure there will be more.
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Covid 19 and the governors early release program is decimating the inmate firefighter counts.
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