Can someone one explain California OES. For instance, The fire burning in SBC is a LPF / SBC ( Calfire ) incident. There’s a ton of OES on scene . How and why does that happen. There is some structure treat but the Calfire resources would be on those?
I seems like OES has exploded the last few years but I’m not sure how and what they are there for. It seemed liked years ago it was surge force at best. How does this work with cal fire and is there a turf issue or is OES pulling money off that would or could be Cal Fire money?
I’m just genuinely curious,
Thanks
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It’s mostly spreading the wealth. With the incidents requiring more engines, CAL FIRE would send a lot of resources and drain areas of resources. The idea is CAL FIRE sends up to a certain point, but to keep staffing up they hit OES. Also OES has a lot of green Type 3s now which are owned by the state, essentially paying for staffing only.
I will say within CAL FIRE the Mason Dixon line still exists and it seems crazy it’s still hard to cross that line.
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There is complex interactions between the 3 players at the GACC supervisors level. Its a constant evaluation of resource availability and draw down, future conditions, agency goals and resources at risk. I have been in the middle of a number of those discussions…to say its complicated is a major understatement.
OES/LG (not exactly the same thing, but related) is primarily a pool of resources, more than anything else. It might be, I get the sense, after the horrible years in 2016-2021, the LG folks don’t want to play as much as they did before. I get that, but I also hope they remember the experience they can gain from playing on the major incident stage.
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@Meot46 look up the CFAA agreement.
This allows the feds and cal fire to request local govt equipment for support when they have large incidents.
OES has expanded its type 3 capacity over the last 10 years and now has type 6 engines.
As mentioned above, these are staffed by local govt firefighters.
Many times on these large fires local govt with oes rigs lumped in are 50% of the assigned resources.
This allows for surge capacity without the cost of employees when they are not needed.
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In my opinion the most well organized system in this state. My first Captain was Dick Barrows in San Bernardino along with Chuck Ulry who were recruited by Chief Bowhay to get Fire./Rescue up and running. Has seen a succession oil talented leaders ever since.
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go back 5 or 6 yrs. the Carr fire in Redding and the Camp fire in Paradise. 58% of the engines and personnel were local Gov, coordinated by OES. OES is now pre-positioning local gov engines and personnel during high risk events. its a great system,
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I would say those resources were “supplied” by OES. The IMT was not OES…OES doesn’t have IMTs. CalFire schedules IMTs year around. The Camp fire was in November…the typical wildland agencies were shutting down for the winter.
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I think it’s fair to say IMT’s are scheduled all year round. Also all OES engines assigned to Local Government departments are all risk and available 24/7/365. We are all in this together to serve The Tax Payer,
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We are already seeing positive results from this too.
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