The Riverside County Fire Department posted at 12:50 p.m. that crews were on a technical rescue at Faith Drive and Meridian Street. A person was trapped in a trench collapse, the post said, and rescue work was underway.

At 1:15 p.m. the department said bystanders had already gotten one patient out of a 15-foot-deep trench before first responders arrived.

“The patient was transported by ground ambulance to a local trauma center with serious injuries,” the post said.

Cal Fire did not release a name. As of 1:15 p.m., that was the last official update posted. The call was not listed on the department’s live-incidents page when checked later Tuesday afternoon.

The post Person pulled from collapsed trench in unincorporated Hemet appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The governor faces a Sept. 30 deadline to sign or veto bills sent to his desk, and among them are a handful of measures with familiar storylines — ones Newsom rejected in previous years that lawmakers have revived, sometimes with tweaks, sometimes not.

One of those is a proposal allowing students without legal immigration status to work campus jobs at California’s public colleges and universities. Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2024 after the University of California warned it could provoke retaliation from the Trump administration, potentially putting federal research dollars and financial aid funding at risk. Democratic lawmakers have sent him a new version anyway, hoping the political landscape has shifted enough to change his mind.

Water use at data centers is also back on the table. Two bills would force developers of these energy- and water-intensive facilities to disclose how much water their operations actually consume. One of the measures closely mirrors a bill Newsom vetoed last year under pressure from tech industry lobbyists, when he said he didn’t want to saddle the sector with “rigid reporting requirements.” Since then, opposition to data centers has grown louder across the state, with several California cities moving to ban new projects outright or impose moratoriums while they sort out the environmental and infrastructure costs.

Firefighters, meanwhile, are making a second attempt at securing better pay and retirement benefits from Cal Fire. Last year, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have established a new formula for raises. This year’s ask is even bigger: legislation that would let firefighters and police officers retire earlier with larger pensions. The state Senate passed that measure unanimously Sunday night, adding fresh pressure on the governor to finally deliver for public safety unions.

Special Treatment for San Diego, Bay Area Projects

Two other bills headed to Newsom’s desk would fast-track major redevelopment efforts in San Diego and the East Bay.

In San Diego, a last-minute legislative maneuver would clear the way for a contentious development that includes a sports arena backed by a billionaire investor, thousands of new housing units built atop a long-vacant arena parking lot, and nearly 15 acres of new public parkland. The project would also be shielded from environmental lawsuits — a provision that drew sharp criticism from some lawmakers who opposed the bill. Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego argued that carving out special legal protection for a politically connected developer sends the wrong message to the public.

Up north, budget legislation moving through the Legislature would redirect $125 million toward purchasing Golden Gate Fields, the shuttered horse racing track along the East Bay shoreline, with plans to convert it into a public park. The money would come from Proposition 4, the $10 billion climate bond voters approved in 2024. Newsom backs the idea, but some lawmakers have questioned whether such a large expenditure on one project could crowd out other climate funding priorities.

Salton Sea Lithium Projects Stall

For years, state leaders — Newsom among them — have talked up the economic potential of extracting lithium from deposits beneath the Salton Sea, envisioning a homegrown supply chain for electric vehicle batteries and consumer electronics. But legal challenges are keeping much of that lithium in the ground.

The Salton Sea region is believed to hold enough lithium to produce roughly 375 million EV batteries, more than the total number of vehicles currently on U.S. roads. Yet one major extraction project, designed to generate enough lithium annually to supply tens of thousands of homes with power, has been tied up in lawsuits alleging the company behind it failed to adequately address environmental concerns.

An Imperial County supervisor noted that delays are somewhat expected given the technical complexity of lithium extraction. But local tribal representatives, community organizations and environmental groups are pushing officials to slow down and take a more careful look at the long-term impacts. Kwaaymii tribal elder Carmen Lucas summed up the sentiment: she isn’t against development, she said, but wants it done responsibly and with balance.

911 Calls at ICE Detention Centers

The Legislature has also passed a bill requiring government agencies to release information about 911 calls placed from immigration detention facilities. State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat, introduced the measure after reporting revealed rape investigations tied to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Rejected These Bills Before. Now They’re Back for Another Look appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

At Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the Pacific Ocean and its near-constant fog blanket the western edge of the coastal bluffs. But just to the east, the Irish Hills rise sharply, their steep slopes thick with brush and oak trees — a combination that makes the site both hard to access and heavy with fuel for wildfire.

“Any fire within the Diablo power plant area could be catastrophic,” said Dave Erickson, a division chief and forester with Cal Fire’s San Luis Obispo unit. The property sits in a very-high fire hazard zone, he explained, “so we take precautions.”

It’s one of many places where California is now stepping in to fill gaps left by decades of underfunded federal wildfire management, deeper cuts under the Trump administration, and firefighting crews stretched thin battling blazes across the West.

A locally based, state-funded group — the San Luis Obispo County Fire Safe Council — began clearing fuel breaks along the ridgelines surrounding the plant. Erickson then put his crews to work closing the remaining gaps, creating a critical anchor point firefighters could use to hold a line against approaching flames.

In years past, the tangle of landowners surrounding the power plant — including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — might have slowed or blocked that kind of project.

But a 2023 agreement between Cal Fire and the bureau allowed Erickson to use state resources on federal land, letting crews finish the fuel break earlier this year. The bureau handled key environmental reviews, planning and approvals.

“The project was designed from the outset as an interagency effort,” said Philip Oviatt, a spokesperson for the California office of the Bureau of Land Management. “No single agency could have achieved this result alone.”

The stakes are high in California, where wildfires have burned through millions of acres over the past decade, killed more than 220 people, contributed to tens of thousands of additional deaths and caused tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

But the price tag for prevention work is steep too. California has spent nearly $500 million on grants for wildfire resilience and forest health projects on federal land since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office, according to the California Natural Resources Agency.

Jonathan Fitch, who manages Cal Fire’s vegetation management program, helped negotiate three new agreements the agency struck last year with the U.S. Forest Service. Those deals let California clear brush, collect pine cones for seed banks, replant burned areas, manage timber and more inside the state’s national forests, Fitch said.

The Forest Service contributed $4 million toward those statewide agreements, some of which will go toward fuel-reduction projects, Fitch said. Still, the overall need dwarfs the available federal funding.

“The real value is unlocking the state’s potential and resources on the federal side,” Fitch said.

Fitch said he often hears the same question: Why should California spend its money, staff and equipment on land the federal government is supposed to manage?

“My answer is that wildfires don’t know boundaries,” Fitch said. “We can’t ignore what’s happening on the federal side, because we’re one state. We’re one landscape.”

A finite number of firefighters

Since President Donald Trump accused California of failing to properly clear its forests — more than half of which are federally managed — Sacramento and Washington have repeatedly clashed over fuel management and federal funding.

Newsom needled Trump last year with a mock executive order titled “Make America Rake Again,” and has since criticized the administration for withholding roughly $1.5 billion in federal aid following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025.

Despite the political friction, California routinely crosses federal boundaries to manage land — and fires.

When the Timber Fire broke out in Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur, tearing through nearly 6,000 acres of rugged terrain and forcing the closure of Highway 1, federal incident management teams were already stretched thin.

Some crews were tied up fighting other fires near Hoopa and across the Pacific Northwest. Others were on mandatory rest, according to Adrienne Freeman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service.

“So we were going to have to look at hiring a team from anywhere in the country, and even those are in short supply,” Freeman said.

Instead, the federal agency asked a Cal Fire incident management team to step in, coordinating the response and handling logistics — everything from meals and planning to finances, equipment repairs, showers and medical support.

Freeman, Cal Fire officials and others say the shrinking pool of federal incident teams reflects the sheer volume of wildfire activity across the West this year.

But Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter and vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said staffing cuts under the Trump administration have made long-standing shortages worse.

“When DOGE let everybody go, we lost people off the teams,” Scopa said, referring to Elon Musk’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency initiative. “We’ve had trouble filling out teams for the last 10 years.”

Freeman said having Cal Fire take the lead on the Timber Fire freed up federal resources to respond elsewhere.

“It’s not the first time we’ve done this, but it’s fairly unique to California,” Freeman said. “There are a finite number of firefighters, but California is in a better position than some states — than most states — because of this relationship.”

A federal blind spot

In other areas, California has found it far harder to compensate for federal shortfalls.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Forest Service lost at least 20% of its workforce last year amid cuts pushed by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

A federal reorganization — along with proposed closures of research facilities — has destabilized the agency and damaged morale. Two former Forest Service employees told CalMatters that key California scientists left the agency after Trump returned to office.

Alan Talhelm, deputy assistant director of climate and energy for Cal Fire, said the loss of federal staff and shifting job assignments have drained the expertise he and his colleagues rely on to fold federal data into the fuel-treatment dashboard maintained by the Governor’s Forest Management Task Force.

“That data still exists… but we don’t have anyone to help us interpret it,” Talhelm said. “If we see something that looks unusual, it’s harder to verify that it’s correct and that it’s accurate information.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said that because the agency tracks fuel treatments differently than state and local agencies, merging the datasets is “complicated.”

That data, which typically lags a couple of years behind, is essential for tracking California’s progress toward state and federal fuel-management goals.

The dashboard gives a statewide snapshot of where thinning or controlled burns are happening — information state agencies rely on when deciding where to direct funding and crews, and information that can shape decisions about where to send firefighters during an active blaze, Talhelm said.

“They can look at this database and say, ‘Oh, there was a prescribed burn here. Oh, there was a fuel break here,’” he said. “That’s a consequence. If we don’t have the right information, the data loses its usefulness.”

Talhelm said federal cuts are also slowing the surveys the Forest Service needs to complete to update the Forest Inventory and Analysis, essentially a census of the nation’s forests.

That data helps scientists and land managers understand how climate change, drought, wildfire, disease and pests are reshaping forests — and what that means for fuel loads, fire risk and even timber supplies in California.

“It’s literally the foundational information that then gets applied to everything from where factories are sited to what the carbon effects are and the benefits of wildfire mitigation measures,” said John Battles, a forest ecology professor at UC Berkeley.

But the data is slow to come out. California is tied with Alaska for having survey information that dates back to 2021.

Cal Fire has tried to speed things along by sending contractors to survey California’s forests. Still, Talhelm said, the federal government isn’t keeping pace with expectations.

“We’re still not there. And we’re not there in part because of the downsizing at the Forest Service,” Talhelm said. “I don’t know if they’ve scaled back their ambitions, but they’ve definitely scaled back their capacity to carry out that mission.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency is conducting a final review of forest inventory data collected between 2022 and 2024 and expects to release it in the coming weeks.

“We share CAL FIRE’s interest in more plots being measured and more frequent updates,” the spokesperson said in an email, adding that several unspecified factors stretched California’s review cycle to seven years instead of the expected five.

That pace is a real problem, Battles said. “Think about how many fires there have been since 2021 that still aren’t reflected in the dataset,” he said.

“There’s always a lag in the data, because it takes time to update. But now we’re five years out… Decisions are being made using outdated, inaccurate information.”

Funding the fight against fire

California has managed to bridge many of these federal gaps thanks to its massive wildfire budget, which has climbed to roughly $4 billion a year. But money dedicated specifically to forest health and fuel management has always represented a relatively small slice of that spending — and now it’s under strain.

Changes the Newsom administration made to a key climate program have already reduced a major funding stream drawn from polluting industries that historically provided up to $200 million a year for wildfire prevention projects.

That figure is shrinking fast — down to $38 million, according to the latest Department of Finance numbers, though those figures won’t be finalized until next year. The Legislative Analyst’s Office warned this spring that the administration’s climate program overhaul risks eliminating that funding source altogether.

Talhelm said this fund has financed many of the grants Cal Fire has awarded for projects on federal land.

One July morning, Fitch hiked up to the ridge to see, for the first time, the fuel break made possible by his work brokering state and federal land agreements. Sunlight burned off the last wisps of fog clinging to the brush on either side of the cleared line.

Fitch called it proof of how strong these partnerships can be.

“The landscape is fragmented,” he said, the fuel break stretching along the ridge behind him. “For Cal Fire to succeed, we can’t do it alone.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Federal Wildfire Crews Stretched Thin, California Steps In to Help appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Fog rolls in off the ocean along the western edge of the property, while the Irish Hills climb steeply to the east — steep, brush-choked terrain that’s difficult to reach and loaded with fuel for a fast-moving fire.

“Any fire within the Diablo power plant area could be catastrophic,” said Dave Erickson, a division chief and forester with Cal Fire’s San Luis Obispo unit. The surrounding land sits in a very high fire severity zone, he said, which is why crews have worked to get ahead of the danger.

Diablo Canyon is one of many places across California where the state has quietly stepped in to cover gaps left by chronic federal underfunding of vegetation management, deeper cuts under the Trump administration, and a wildland firefighting workforce spread thin by blazes burning across the West.

A local nonprofit, the San Luis Obispo County Community Fire Safe Council, began building a fuel break along the ridgelines surrounding the plant using state money. Erickson’s crews then finished the job, closing gaps in the line to give firefighters a fighting chance to stop flames before they reach the facility.

In years past, the mix of landowners around the plant — including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — might have slowed or blocked that kind of work. But a 2023 agreement between Cal Fire and the bureau allowed state crews to operate on federal land, while the bureau handled environmental reviews and permitting. The fuel break was completed earlier this year.

“The project was designed from the beginning as an interagency effort,” said Philip Oviatt, a Bureau of Land Management California spokesperson. “No single agency could have achieved this outcome independently.”

The urgency behind that kind of cooperation is easy to understand. Wildfires have scorched millions of acres across California over the past decade, killing more than 220 people directly, contributing to tens of thousands of additional deaths tied to smoke exposure, and causing tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

The cost of prevention isn’t cheap either. Since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office, California has spent nearly half a billion dollars on grants for wildfire resilience and forest health work on federal land, according to the California Natural Resources Agency.

Jonathan Fitch, who manages Cal Fire’s vegetation management program, helped negotiate three new agreements last year with the U.S. Forest Service that allow the state to clear brush, gather pine cones for seed banks, replant burned areas and manage timber on national forest land within California. The Forest Service contributed $4 million toward those efforts statewide — a fraction of what’s actually needed.

“The true value is unlocking the state’s potential and resources on the federal landscape,” Fitch said.

He said he’s often asked why California should spend its own money and staff time working on land the federal government is supposed to manage.

“My response is, well, wildfires don’t stop at boundaries,” Fitch said. “We cannot disregard what happens in the federal space, because we’re one state. We’re one landscape.”

A shrinking pool of firefighters

Tension between Sacramento and Washington over forest management and wildfire funding has simmered since President Donald Trump first accused California of failing to properly manage its forests — more than half of which are actually under federal control.

Newsom mocked Trump last year with a mock “Make America Rake Again” executive order, and more recently criticized the administration for withholding roughly $1.5 billion in aid promised after the devastating Los Angeles firestorm in January 2025.

Yet despite the political sparring, California routinely crosses jurisdictional lines to help manage fires on federal land.

When the Timber Fire broke out in Los Padres National Forest near Big Sur — eventually burning nearly 6,000 acres and forcing the closure of Highway 1 — federal incident management teams were tied up elsewhere, fighting fires in Hoopa and the Pacific Northwest, or resting under mandatory time-off rules, according to U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman.

“So we were going to be looking at ordering a team from across the country, and even those are few and far between,” Freeman said.

Instead, the Forest Service brought in a Cal Fire incident management team to run the response — handling logistics, food, planning, finances, equipment repairs and medical care for firefighters on the line.

Freeman and others say the shortage of federal incident teams reflects the sheer volume of fire activity burning across the West this year. But Bobbie Scopa, a retired firefighter and vice president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, argues that Trump administration staffing cuts have made a long-standing problem worse.

“When we DOGED everybody, we lost people from the teams,” Scopa said, referring to Elon Musk’s short-lived government efficiency initiative. “We’ve been having a hard time staffing the teams for the last 10 years.”

Freeman said turning to Cal Fire for the Timber Fire freed up federal resources to respond elsewhere.

“This is not the first time we’ve done this, but it’s something fairly unique to California,” she said. “There are a finite number of firefighters, but California is in a better position than some states — than most states — because of this relationship.”

Data gaps and disappearing expertise

In other areas, the state has had a harder time compensating for federal shortfalls.

As the Department of Government Efficiency slashed federal payrolls, the Forest Service lost at least 20% of its workforce last year, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Reorganization efforts and proposed closures of research facilities have further destabilized the agency, and morale has suffered. Two former Forest Service employees told CalMatters that several key California scientists left the agency after Trump took office.

Alan Talhelm, assistant deputy director for climate and energy at Cal Fire, said the loss of federal staff and expertise has made it harder to keep the state’s fuels-treatment tracking system, used by the governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, accurate and up to date.

“Those data still exist… But we have nobody to help us interpret those data,” Talhelm said. “If we see something that looks unusual, it’s harder for us to verify that it is what it should be and that it’s accurate information.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency tracks fuels treatments differently than the state does, which makes merging the two datasets “challenging.”

The tracking dashboard, which already runs a couple of years behind, gives state officials a broad view of where thinning and controlled burns have taken place — information that helps guide where to send grant money, crews and firefighting resources when a blaze breaks out.

“They can look at this database and say, ‘Oh, there was a prescribed burn here. Oh, there was a fuel break here,'” Talhelm said. “That’s a consequence right there. If we don’t have the correct information, it makes the data less useful.”

Federal staffing cuts have also slowed the Forest Service’s contribution to California’s Forest Inventory and Analysis, a nationwide census of forest conditions that helps scientists track how climate change, drought, disease and fire are reshaping the landscape.

“It’s literally the foundational information that then goes into everything from where you site your mills, to what carbon is doing, to the benefits of wildfire mitigations,” said John Battles, a forest ecology professor at UC Berkeley.

California’s survey data now lags as far back as 2021 — tied with Alaska for the oldest in the country. Cal Fire has hired contractors to speed up the surveys, but Talhelm said the federal side of the work hasn’t kept pace.

“We’re not there yet. And we’re not there in part because of the reduction in forest service staffing,” he said. “I don’t know that they have scaled back their ambition, but they’ve scaled back their ability to implement that mission.”

A Forest Service spokesperson said the agency is finishing a review of inventory data collected between 2022 and 2024 and expects to release it publicly within the next few weeks. “We share CAL FIRE’s interest in seeing more plots measured and more frequent update(s),” the spokesperson said, adding that unspecified factors had stretched California’s review cycle from a planned five years to seven.

Battles said the delay carries real consequences. “Think about how many fires there have been since 2021 that don’t show up yet in the dataset,” he said. “There’s always a lag in the data, because it takes awhile. But now it’s just getting to be five years … You’re making decisions with wrong, not up-to-date information.”

Money troubles ahead

California’s ability to step into federal gaps has been made possible in part by its heavy spending on wildfire, which now totals roughly $4 billion a year. But the share dedicated specifically to forest health and fuels reduction has always been comparatively small — and that funding stream is now shrinking further.

Changes the Newsom administration made to a major climate program have drained a fund fed by polluter fees that historically provided up to $200 million annually for wildfire resilience projects. That figure has already dropped to $38 million, according to preliminary Department of Finance estimates, and the Legislative Analyst’s Office has warned the fund could be zeroed out entirely.

That money has historically supported many of the Cal Fire grants used for projects on federal land, Talhelm said.

On a recent July morning, Fitch hiked up to see, for the first time, the completed fuel break near Diablo Canyon — the product of the state-federal partnerships he helped broker. Morning fog was just beginning to burn off, revealing coyote brush and scrub lining either side of the cleared ridge.

Fitch called it proof of what strong partnerships can accomplish.

“Land is fragmented,” he said, gesturing to the fuel break stretching along the ridgeline behind him. “For Cal Fire to be successful, we can’t do it alone.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Federal Wildfire Crews Stretched Thin, California Steps In to Fill the Gaps appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Reporters from six newsrooms across six Western states, including CalMatters’ Rachel Becker, examined the shift in federal wildfire strategy in a pair of collaborative reports published this week. Their reporting found that the Trump administration has merged wildland firefighting crews from four federal agencies under a single command, part of a broader push toward what officials call a “suppression-first” approach — attacking fires immediately and aggressively rather than allowing some to burn under controlled conditions.

Federal officials argue the strategy better protects both communities and firefighters. But critics, including forestry experts and some state officials, say it abandons a more preventive approach that relies on prescribed burns and allowing low-intensity fires to clear out dry brush and dead vegetation that fuel bigger blazes later. Without that kind of fuel reduction, they warn, landscapes across the West will keep accumulating tinder for the next major fire.

Some observers have compared the administration’s new posture to the so-called “10 a.m. rule,” a decades-old Forest Service policy that required crews to extinguish every fire by the following morning. That approach was largely abandoned decades ago after research showed it contributed to unnaturally dense, fire-prone forests.

Reaction from Western states has been mixed. Jamie Barnes of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources said she backs a full-suppression strategy given the region’s prolonged drought and increasingly volatile fuel conditions, arguing it’s the safest option for both firefighters and residents.

California, however, has raised concerns — not over suppression tactics themselves, but over the administration’s broader plan to consolidate federal fire agencies. In a May letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot warned that reorganizing federal firefighting operations could weaken the state’s wildfire preparedness and increase public safety risks, even as he acknowledged the goal of improving efficiency.

California’s stake in the debate is significant. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, remains the largest firefighting agency of any state in the nation, giving Sacramento outsized influence in shaping how the state responds to federal policy changes.

In other Inland Empire news, the California Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments today on a case with deep roots in Riverside County. Justices will consider whether former Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law when his office seized roughly 650,000 ballots cast during last year’s statewide vote on redistricting.

The hearing merges two related lawsuits. In one, California Attorney General Rob Bonta accuses Bianco of unlawfully seizing and recounting ballots. Bianco, who later ran unsuccessfully for governor, maintains that his actions were legal because he had obtained judicial warrants to investigate alleged irregularities in the vote. Bonta counters that those warrants did not authorize the sheriff’s actions. Central to the case is a broader question: whether a county sheriff must halt election-related enforcement actions when directed to do so by the state attorney general.

The ballot fight traces back to last year’s statewide vote on Proposition 50, which California voters approved after Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers sought to counter Texas Republicans’ redrawing of congressional districts to favor GOP candidates. California’s redistricting measure was designed to help Democrats in the fight for control of the U.S. House. Several other states have waged their own redistricting battles this election cycle, adding uncertainty to forecasts about which party will control the chamber after November.

Elsewhere in the state, a rural Sierra Nevada county is grappling with a very different kind of legal complication — one involving artificial intelligence. A California appeals court has appointed a judge to investigate how AI-generated errors may have affected criminal cases in Nevada County, where prosecutors used generative AI tools to help draft legal filings.

According to reporting by CalMatters’ Khari Johnson, prosecutors in the county of about 100,000 residents filed inaccurate information in at least four criminal cases last fall after relying on AI systems for writing or proofreading. A former prosecutor involved in some of the errors said in a sworn declaration that a supervisor blocked her from immediately notifying the court, defense attorneys and defendants once the mistakes were discovered. She also said the office had no formal AI policy in place, even though staff were encouraged to use the technology — tools that other studies have shown are prone to generating false or fabricated information.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Trump’s Approach to Wildfire Management Sparks Debate Over Let-It-Burn Policy appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Dove Fire, burning in the Central Sierra foothills near Sonora, forced road closures and evacuations of hundreds of homes last weekend, shaking Californians out of what had otherwise been a relatively calm summer for wildfires. Cal Fire investigators believe the blaze was sparked by a reckless 30-year-old man.

John Buckley, a former U.S. Forest Service firefighter who now leads the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, said he wasn’t shocked when the fire erupted. Driving through the region earlier that day, he had already warned his wife that the vegetation looked primed to ignite.

“We drive back, and they’re burning over at the city of Sonora,” Buckley recalled. “The fuels are now quite primed for burning, and they’re only going to get drier.”

Crews have since gained control of the 226-acre fire, but forecasters are warning of dangerously high temperatures in the days ahead — and new scientific research suggests that heat waves and wildfire activity are closely linked across the American West.

It’s still early in California’s fire year, and experts caution against drawing sweeping conclusions. Yet the state’s numbers stand out compared to the destruction unfolding elsewhere. Wildfires have scorched millions of acres this year in Oregon, Canada and parts of Europe, while California has recorded roughly 4,030 fires burning just over 208,000 acres — well below the five-year average of about 5,300 fires and 300,000 acres burned by this point in the season, according to Cal Fire data.

Even so, Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuña said he steers clear of calling the season “quiet.”

“There is a superstition that when you use words like ‘quiet, slow, bored’ in the fire station, that just means that you’re about to get hit with an amazingly busy shift,” Acuña said.

John Abatzoglou, a climatology professor at UC Merced, said California has largely benefited from favorable weather patterns this year, despite a thin snowpack and an unusually hot March. That streak of good fortune, he said, is about to be tested.

“Now, of course, we have a heat wave on our doorstep,” Abatzoglou said.

National Weather Service offices throughout the state are forecasting a sharp rise in temperatures beginning later this week. The Los Angeles/Oxnard office said conditions are expected to turn “dangerously hot” by Friday.

That pairing of extreme heat and fire risk is a familiar pattern across the West, according to a study Abatzoglou co-authored, published in the journal Science Advances and led by researcher Dmitri Kalashnikov. The study found that nearly half of all wildfire acreage burned during warm-season months between 2001 and 2024 occurred during or immediately following a heat wave, particularly in forested regions.

Heat waves — defined as three or more consecutive days with temperatures in the top 10% for the season — currently account for only about 15% or less of the warm season. But climate change is driving their frequency upward, researchers say.

Abatzoglou pointed to several reasons heat and fire go hand in hand. Prolonged heat dries out vegetation, making it more flammable. It also raises nighttime temperatures, which earlier research has linked to more intense overnight fire behavior — eliminating a key window firefighters typically rely on to gain ground. Heat waves can also set the stage for lightning strikes, which have ignited some of the largest fires in California history.

“And then it’s off to the races in terms of fire activity,” Abatzoglou said.

He emphasized that not every heat wave will trigger a fire surge — an ignition still has to occur at the right place and time. But Acuña urged residents to avoid providing that spark. That means avoiding yard work, especially mowing, during the hottest parts of the day or when a red flag warning is in effect, securing tow chains so they don’t drag and throw sparks on pavement, and never parking a hot vehicle on dry grass.

Following the Dove Fire, California requested and received federal emergency assistance within hours. However, a separate and more prolonged dispute between state and federal officials continues over wildfire recovery funding, including hundreds of millions of dollars tied to last year’s devastating Los Angeles fires. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in May that FEMA had yet to release those funds.

As for what the rest of the fire season might bring, Acuña said he’s just as reluctant to make predictions as he is to use the word “quiet.”

“It depends on what the weather brings us,” he said. “If it brings us hot, windy, red flag warning conditions, then that could certainly be a problem. If it brings us rain, well, that brings us a totally different concern. We are ready to respond.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Quiet Fire Season in California Could Take a Dangerous Turn as Heat Wave Builds appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

“This is like the mothership of forestry in California right here,” said Stewart McMorrow, staff chief for wildfire resilience at Cal Fire, standing outside the seed bank at the agency’s Lewis A. Moran Reforestation Center.

Those frozen seeds are the backbone of California’s effort to regrow forests after wildfire, particularly for private landowners who depend on them to replant scorched property. But by the state’s own estimates, the supply isn’t close to sufficient for the scale of destruction California is now experiencing.

Decades of fire suppression combined with a warming climate have produced wildfires so intense that they are killing off forests that once depended on periodic, low-intensity fire to regenerate. Instead of bouncing back, some of these iconic California landscapes are transforming permanently into brush and scrubland.

Over the past 25 years, severe wildfires have scorched roughly 2.3 million acres of California forest so thoroughly that natural regrowth is unlikely, according to a working draft of the state’s new reforestation strategy obtained by CalMatters. That’s a serious problem for a state counting on its forests to store carbon, safeguard water supplies, filter air pollution and provide wildlife habitat. One recent analysis projects that by 2071, California could lose half of its existing forestland.

“Reforestation,” said Malcolm North, a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station, “is pretty damn important.”

Yet Cal Fire estimates the state would need to roughly triple its seed bank capacity just to replant a quarter of the privately owned forestland that needs it — a tall order requiring more seeds, more storage, and more workers. And that doesn’t even touch federal land, which makes up more than half of California’s forests and accounts for most of the acreage awaiting replanting.

CalMatters reviewed the draft strategy, which is being developed by the USDA California Climate Hub alongside state and federal agencies, the nonprofit American Forests, and the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force. For decades, though, both Sacramento and Washington have allowed the funding and staffing needed for large-scale reforestation to erode.

“We need to focus on reforestation as an emergency, as a state,” McMorrow said. “We are slowly losing our forestland, and we’re not catching up.”

**A shrinking federal workforce**

Timber sales once financed much of the Forest Service’s replanting work. But as endangered species protections and other environmental rules tightened logging on national forests, and wildfires grew larger and more destructive, the agency’s budget and staffing took a hit. Non-fire personnel responsible for managing national forest lands dropped by nearly 40% between 1998 and 2015, according to a 2015 federal report.

A 2022 Forest Service document warned of a “critical need” for more staff dedicated specifically to reforestation work. Congress and the Biden administration responded in 2021 by boosting funding for a federal reforestation trust fund, a push backed by American Forests. Within a few years, the agency reported replanting about 285,000 acres nationwide in a single year — the highest total in more than 25 years.

Still, the need vastly outpaces what’s being done, and the process itself is slow. Crews first must remove dead and dying trees to reduce safety hazards and prevent future fires from reburning the same ground, according to a Forest Service spokesperson. Sourcing seeds and growing seedlings can then take another year or two before any planting begins.

Solomon Dobrowski, a landscape ecology professor at the University of Montana, said the federal government’s reforestation capacity didn’t disappear overnight — and won’t come back quickly, either. His research found that the reforestation backlog spans millions of acres across the West and could double or triple in coming decades.

“You don’t turn that ship around on a dime,” Dobrowski said.

Instead, the Trump administration slashed Forest Service staffing by 20% last year.

“It just makes me cry at night … it’s basically a child swinging a wrecking ball,” said Hugh Safford, a fire ecologist at UC Davis and former Forest Service regional ecologist. “Morale is down, capacity already was really minimal.”

Meanwhile, the fires keep coming.

**The gap keeps growing**

“This is one of the least-known impacts of climate change and megafires,” said Patrick Wright, director of the state’s wildfire task force, referring to forest loss.

The draft strategy obtained by CalMatters doesn’t come with dedicated funding attached. Instead, Wright said, its purpose is to get every agency and organization involved in reforestation working from the same playbook — streamlining permitting, prioritizing projects that protect water supplies and public safety, and expanding the pipeline of seeds, seedlings and trained workers.

It also encourages land managers to plant trees at lower densities with more natural spacing, moving away from the traditional tightly packed rows of seedlings. Researchers have linked dense plantings to more severe wildfires down the road.

The most sobering numbers in the draft concern the current pace of work. To meet the state’s existing post-fire replanting targets — which call for 280,000 acres per year starting in 2030 — California would need to expand its reforestation efforts by 35% annually. That kind of expansion would require substantial new funding, the report notes, since replanting can cost as much as $6,400 per acre.

Right now, the state is falling well short. Since 2020, land managers have replanted about 254,000 acres of severely burned forest — only around 16% of the forestland stripped bare by high-severity fire between 2020 and 2024. On federal land outside designated wilderness, the figure drops to just 8%.

Safford’s own research paints an even bleaker picture. Once wilderness areas and forests likely to regrow naturally are factored in, his recent study found the Forest Service replanted only 1.2% of its California lands burned by high-severity wildfire between 2016 and 2023.

It wasn’t always this way, Safford said. Replanting efforts largely kept up with wildfire losses until around 2006.

“And then,” he said, “it just falls to shit.”

**‘Nowhere near prepared’**

Despite public sparring between Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump over forest management, state and federal reforestation efforts — and funding — often overlap on the ground.

Cal Fire funds research, issues grants for forest restoration on private, state and even federal land, and operates the Davis reforestation center, where rows of young conifer seedlings get misted in the summer heat.

McMorrow, dressed in Cal Fire’s navy uniform, can’t resist pulling weeds from around the seedlings as he walks the nursery rows.

One of the biggest bottlenecks, he said, is simply gathering enough seeds — getting trained climbers to the right trees at the right moment to collect ripe cones before they fall or rot.

“Believe me, I do it,” said McMorrow, who helped launch Cal Fire’s tree-climbing program. “We are trying to meet the demand that’s in front of us, and it’s crushing.”

Even so, the funding for Cal Fire’s reforestation work — pieced together from the state budget, federal grants and one-time allocations — remains a small and unpredictable slice of the agency’s multibillion-dollar budget.

The Davis facility actually shut down in the early 2000s amid statewide budget cuts, though the seed bank freezer kept running. It didn’t fully reopen until 2017, after lawmakers redirected a 2012 fee on wood products to bring it back to life. Now, upgrading and expanding the center carries an estimated $26.2 million price tag; this year’s state budget allocated just $1.2 million for preliminary planning.

Other funding sources are also uncertain. In May, California’s climate regulators — led by Newsom appointee Lauren Sanchez — voted to overhaul a major climate program in ways that could slash or eliminate up to $200 million a year earmarked for wildfire resilience, with reforestation grants competing against many other priorities for what remains. And while the Proposition 4 climate bond includes $1.5 billion for wildfire and forest resilience, state leaders are already spending it down quickly.

“The truth of the matter is that California is probably, infrastructurally speaking, in a better place than any other western state,” Safford said. “What that tells you is how piss-poor the capacity is in general in the Western U.S., because California is nowhere near prepared for the scale of this.”

**Hunting for cones**

On the shores of Jenkinson Lake in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Stella Krone and Elyse Wohlenberg wrestled with an oversized slingshot nearly as tall as they were, working together to stretch the bungee cord into place before Wohlenberg stepped clear.

“All clear?” Krone called out, aiming the slingshot toward a Douglas fir some 50 yards off. “Firing!”

Krone, Wohlenberg and dozens of others — some forestry professionals, others simply curious — had gathered for Cone Camp, a training program run by American Forests with support from Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service. Participants fanned out across the forest with slingshots and modified potato guns, learning to knock loose pine cones to check for ripeness before sending climbers up to harvest them for the seed bank.

But this year, cones were scarce. As Krone and another participant tugged on a rope slung over the canopy, only a scattering of last season’s dried-out cones dropped to the forest floor.

“So far, not a great cone year,” said Leana Weissberg, American Forests’ California director.

Undeterred, the group regrouped and moved on to try their luck at another tree.

“Let’s go,” Krone said. “We’re cone hunters for a reason.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California’s Wildfire-Scarred Forests Are Being Replanted Faster Than They Can Regrow appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

    The Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner’s Bureau confirmed Monday that the victims were 43-year-old Arthur Fernandez Jr. and his 10-year-old son, Arthur Fernandez, both residents of San Jacinto.

    The fatal crash occurred shortly after noon Friday at the intersection of Domenigoni Parkway and State Street.

    According to Cal Fire Capt. John Clingingsmith, a county fire crew was responding to a vegetation fire along Highway 74 near the western boundary of the San Bernardino National Forest when the collision happened.

    Investigators said the fire engine was traveling north on State Street with its emergency lights and siren activated. At the same time, Fernandez was driving a Mini Cooper westbound on Gibbel Road, which transitions into Domenigoni Parkway at the intersection. Two children were riding in the vehicle with him.

    Fernandez was pronounced dead at the scene. Both children were transported to nearby hospitals for treatment. Authorities later confirmed that the 10-year-old boy succumbed to his injuries. Information regarding the condition of the second juvenile passenger has not been released.

    A fundraising campaign established for the family indicated that Fernandez was also the father of a 5-year-old son. It has not been confirmed whether that child was the other passenger involved in the crash.

    “Arthur was an extraordinary father,” organizers wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Everything he did, every single day, was for his children. He poured his heart and soul into being the best dad possible, leaving behind a beautiful five-year-old son who will now grow up without his father and big brother.”

    The fundraiser also described the family’s grief following the sudden loss and noted that loved ones are facing unexpected funeral and burial expenses.

    By Monday afternoon, donations had climbed to nearly $9,000.

    Three firefighters who were aboard the county engine also suffered injuries in the crash. Officials said their injuries were not considered life-threatening. They were transported to Inland Valley Medical Center in Wildomar for evaluation and treatment and were later released.

    Emergency personnel from the Hemet Fire Department, Hemet Police Department, California Highway Patrol and additional Riverside County fire units responded to the scene. The busy intersection remained closed for several hours as investigators worked to document evidence and clear the roadway.

    Authorities said there is currently no indication that alcohol or drugs played a role in the collision.

    The California Highway Patrol’s San Gorgonio Pass Area office is leading the investigation. Anyone who witnessed the crash or has information related to the incident is encouraged to contact CHP investigators at 951-846-5300.

    Source: City News Service

The post Father, 10-Year-Old Son Identified in Fatal Hemet Crash Involving Fire Engine appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

    The lawsuit was announced Tuesday as Renteria faces multiple felony charges tied to separate alleged assaults involving three women. According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Renteria was rearrested Friday and is now facing 12 felony counts that include kidnapping, forcible rape and assault.

    Investigators allege the incidents occurred during 2025 while Renteria was employed as a firefighter with CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire Department. Authorities said the criminal investigation remains active and additional victims may still come forward.

    According to the civil complaint, one alleged victim claims she was assaulted over a period of roughly six hours beginning the night of Nov. 6 and continuing into the early morning hours of Nov. 7, 2025. The lawsuit alleges the woman was brought to Fire Station 96 on Glen Oaks Road in Temecula, where the attacks allegedly took place.

    Court filings state the woman was allegedly taken to a shed located behind the station and repeatedly assaulted. The complaint further alleges she was later brought inside the station, photographed while unclothed and threatened when she asked to return home to her children.

    According to the lawsuit, the woman was ultimately released around 5 a.m. on Nov. 7 after several hours of alleged abuse.

    The complaint states the woman reported the alleged incident shortly afterward to a retired firefighter friend, who then contacted law enforcement authorities. An official investigation involving the sheriff’s department reportedly began in January 2026.

    Renteria was placed on leave by CAL FIRE after the agency became aware of the allegations, according to previous statements released by the department. He was later arrested in April on multiple felony charges connected to sexual assault allegations before being released on bond. Authorities said Friday’s rearrest involved additional accusations tied to other victims.

    Attorney David Ring, who represents one of the accusers, criticized the alleged conduct and questioned how the incidents were allowed to occur.

    “This is shocking behavior, particularly from a firefighter on duty — someone who is hired to protect our communities,” Ring said in a statement. “Renteria must be held accountable, and CAL FIRE must answer for how this was allowed to happen.”

    The lawsuit claims CAL FIRE and the State of California were negligent in hiring, supervising and retaining Renteria as an employee. Attorneys representing the plaintiff argue the agency failed to act quickly enough after allegations were first reported.

    In an earlier statement, CAL FIRE said Renteria had been served with administrative leave paperwork and had not returned to work after the department learned of the allegations on Jan. 4, 2026.

    “CAL FIRE demands its employees uphold standards of professional conduct both on- and off-duty,” the agency previously stated.

    Another attorney representing the plaintiff, Neil Gehlawat, said the allegations outlined in the lawsuit suggest the possibility of additional victims.

    “The severity and what appear to be deliberate preparations for our client’s horrific assault lead us to believe this is not an isolated incident,” Gehlawat said. “If there are additional victims or witnesses, we encourage them to contact our office so these actions can be fully investigated.”

    The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department has also indicated there may be additional victims connected to the investigation. Officials are encouraging anyone with information involving Renteria or possible related incidents to contact Investigator Joe Riddle at 951-955-1700 or through the department’s tip lines.

The post Woman Suing CAL FIRE Over Alleged Assault by Temecula Firefighter appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

In a 4-0 vote without comment — during which Supervisor Yxstian Gutierrez was absent — on Tuesday, the board signed off on the district’s plan to augment outlays for the “Heli-Hydrant Fire Protection System Phase 2 Project” from $513,000 to a total $754,000.

According to documents posted to the board’s agenda, following solicitation of bids from contractors to complete the work, the “total cost of the project increased beyond the amount originally contemplated.”

The Flood Control & Water Conservation District partnered with the Jurupa Community Services District in 2024 to initiate the protection system project, which will rely on water supplies managed by JCSD to feed open water tanks containing up to 10,000 gallons each.

“This will provide supplemental water resources for Cal Fire (rotor craft) during wildfire response in fire-prone areas … in Riverside County,” according to Flood Control & Water Conservation District documents.

JCSD personnel will be responsible for maintaining the tanks after they’re constructed.

The sites designated for the new supply systems are at the intersection of Bain Street and Limonite Avenue, along the north side of the Santa Ana River bottom in Jurupa Valley; near Citrus Street and Hamner Avenue in Eastvale; and just east of the Oak Quarry Golf Club, near McLaren Lane and Sandra Drive, at the northern edge of Jurupa Valley.

There was no indication of when the projects may be completed.

The post Heli-Hydrants Planned Across Riverside County To Aid In Wildfire Battle appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.