California fills federal wildfire gaps as crews remain stretched across West
A Cal Fire division chief warned this week that any fire near California’s last working nuclear power plant could be catastrophic. The Diablo Canyon Power Plant sits in a very high fire severity zone, said Dave Erickson, a division chief and forester with the Cal Fire San Luis Obispo unit. “So we just take precautions,” he said.
The plant is cradled in a landscape that would worry any firefighter when the wind picks up. The Pacific Ocean and its perpetual fog lick the western edge of the coastal bluffs holding the facility. To the east, the Irish Hills rise steeply — their slopes rugged, dark with scrub and oak, difficult to access and full of fuel.
Diablo Canyon is one of the many places where California is now stepping into federal gaps, according to an Associated Press report. Those gaps, the report said, were created by Congress’ long-term underinvestment in fuels management on federal lands, the Trump administration’s cuts, and firefighters stretched thin by blazes raging across the West.
As MSI previously reported, nine US Forest Service firefighters told the Guardian in August that the agency was operating with critical staffing shortages, contradicting public assurances from USFS chief Tom Schultz that the workforce was fully staffed. California’s expanded role in wildfire response is a direct consequence of the federal shortfall those firefighters described.