The Scanner: California firefighters forced to shift training after each new wildfire
The Scanner: California firefighters forced to shift training after each new wildfire
10 December 2018
Published by https://www.sfchronicle.com/
USA – The fires broiling vast swaths of California get deadlier and more destructive every year because of bone-dry vegetation and increasing temperatures brought on by climate change. But the landscape isn’t the only thing permanently altered by the flames.
Fire departments across the state have had to rethink the way they train for unpredictable infernos and are rushing to install new risk-prevention measures.
James Connors, co-coordinator of City College of San Francisco’s Fire Academy, said firefighting used to be a mix of rescues, evacuations and battling blazes. But in recent years, initial responses have focused largely on evacuations.
The shift in priorities forced Connors, a retired San Francisco Fire Department captain, to repeatedly revise his fall semester course in introductory wildland firefighting because of last year’s Wine Country fires, and this summer’s Carr Fire and Mendocino Complex Fire.
November’s Camp Fire got the gears in his mind turning again.
“My curriculum is going to change even though there’s 2½ weeks left,” Connors said. “I definitely am going to spend way more time getting the students involved in looking into this interaction of fuels and topography in fire weather.”
In March and April of every year, firefighters get together to revise escape strategies and the challenges posed by different combinations of brush fire fuels and dry conditions. Even though urban fire departments might not manage much wildland, they’re commonly called in to help out with wildfires and departments still have to worry about foothill communities and open spaces.
A fire that once burned a few acres could now char twice as much land given the state’s dry climate, and if firefighters aren’t prepared, the consequences could be deadly.
“The bottom line is that we’re just going to have to think bigger, because these fires are just burning so much more rapidly and greater intensity and frequency than we’re used to,” said Eric Nickel, Palo Alto’s fire chief. “It’s scary.”
This process includes annual inspections for homes in the foothills, sending crews to review evacuation routes and regularly reviewing building codes and red-flag warning procedures.
Keith May, an assistant fire chief in Berkeley, said the department’s plans used to be reviewed every two years, but they’re now being updated more frequently. He cited the Tubbs and Thomas fires as catalysts for recent revisions.
Like Connors, May said the Camp Fire has also spurred another re-evaluation. The two-lane road that left many people in Paradise stuck in traffic as the fire came roaring down has prompted the department to consider revising evacuation plans for the Berkeley hills.
Scrutinizing major wildfires has now become a continuous process that leaves little time to rest.
“We need to be on the forefront of what is changing, even if it doesn’t necessarily impact my community in the worst way,” Nickel said.
Man guilty of murder in gin bottle attack
It took Raymond Best six days to die last summer after being smashed in the head with a Tanqueray gin bottle outside the Kaiser hospital on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. It took a jury just one day to find his killer guilty in the brutal crime.
Randall Marshall, 42, was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder, residential burglary and commercial burglary.
“This defendant’s unprovoked attack on an unsuspecting victim is alarming,” San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said after the verdict. “He is a significant danger to our community and needs to be taken off of our streets.”
Marshall smashed Best, 50, in the head with the green booze bottle as Best sat on the sidewalk outside the hospital on the morning of Aug. 20, 2017.
After landing the brutal blow, Marshall bolted and took off his shirt as he fled the scene. A few blocks away he went into the backyard of a home, broke down a door leading into the kitchen and demanded two women inside give up their phones.
One of the women began screaming, and Marshall again was off and running.
Later that afternoon, Marshall broke into an office on Sacramento Street where police arrested him still in possession of the Tanqueray bottle used in the murder.
After being struck, Best stumbled into the hospital where doctors found he had a traumatic brain injury and rushed him to the trauma center at San Francisco General.
He held on for six days but eventually succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.
Marshall is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 2. He faces a maximum term of life in prison.
BART cops feel the love
Until Thursday, BART police held a dubious distinction as the Bay Area’s second-lowest-paid law enforcement agency, according to a union-funded study of 10 departments in the region.
Keith Garcia, president of the transit agency’s Police Officers Association, said that explains why BART’s department was short 26 officers when it confronted a string of violent crimes and homicides over the summer, including the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old Nia Wilson. But now the understaffed force is about to get a pay bump, and officials say that should help in drawing some new recruits.
The new four-year contract, unanimously approved by BART’s Board of Directors on Thursday, includes a one-time 6 percent salary increase with annual raises of 2.5 to 2.75 percent over the course of the contract.
BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas, who temporarily enacted mandatory overtime shifts this summer after Wilson’s death, lauded the new agreement and said it will “make us a more attractive destination for potential hires.”
After 10 months of negotiations, Garcia also seemed pleased with the deal.
“It’s a labor of love,” he said.
