The bill, which had cleared the Legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support, would have lowered the retirement age for public safety workers and expanded pension formulas — changes labor groups argued were long overdue given the physical demands of the job.

In his veto message, Newsom said the measure would have unwound key parts of a 2012 pension reform law championed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, one enacted at a time when California’s major retirement systems were reeling from Great Recession losses.

“I still recall — before PEPRA’s passage in 2012 — the alarming forecasts, the fierce criticism of public employees, and the growing pressure to eliminate defined benefit plans all together,” Newsom wrote, referring to the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act. “This is an era of California history I do not wish to repeat.”

Brown’s law reshaped retirement rules for public safety workers statewide, pushing the retirement age from 50 to 57 and trimming the annual pension accrual rate from 3% to 2.7%. It also required employees to contribute more from their own paychecks toward their retirement.

Assembly Bill 1383, authored by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood, sought to roll back some of those changes. It would have dropped the retirement age to 55, raised pension earning caps and given unions more room to negotiate accrual rates as high as 3% per year of service.

Supporters argued the physical toll of policing and firefighting justifies an earlier retirement. “AB 1383 gives us something important: Two more years with our families,” said Darrell Roberts, president of California Professional Firefighters, speaking last week at a rally on the Capitol steps that drew hundreds of public safety workers.

But the price tag worried city and county governments across the state, including in the Inland Empire. According to estimates from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the bill’s provisions would have added hundreds of millions of dollars annually in costs to local governments responsible for funding these pensions.

“It represents the greatest long-term financial threat to the sustainability of cities in years,” La Verne City Manager Ken Domer told CalMatters in a recent interview.

A coalition representing cities, counties and special districts praised Newsom’s decision to reject the bill. “At a time of severe fiscal uncertainty and growing demand for services, it is more important than ever for state leaders to help control costs,” the group said in a statement.

The bill’s legislative support had been striking — it passed the Senate 33-0 and cleared the Assembly 69-2. At last week’s rally, lawmakers stood alongside firefighters and police officers holding signs reading “Firefighters deserve a safe retirement” and “Keep California safe. Recruit. Retain. Sign AB 1383.”

Assemblywoman Stephanie Nguyen, D-Elk Grove, told the crowd the fight would continue regardless of the outcome. “This is just the beginning. After we get this signed, we will do more. We will fight for more to show you that we appreciate you,” she said.

Following the veto, Roberts said the firefighters union was “deeply disappointed” but vowed to keep pushing for change. “To every CPF member, this fight is not over. I made a commitment to you all; we will keep fighting for retirement security, and we will stand together,” he said in a statement Sunday.

Original source: CalMatters

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Assembly Bill 1383 would lower the retirement age for full benefits from 57 to 55 for public safety workers and would let unions negotiate pension formulas with an accrual rate as high as 3% per year of service, up from the current 2.7%. The bill also raises a cap on pensionable income for higher-paid public employees across the board, not just those in law enforcement and fire service.

The measure cleared the Legislature with broad bipartisan support, passing 33-0 in the Senate and 70-2 in the Assembly. Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Lancaster Republican, said she backed the bill because public safety workers “run toward fire, violent crime and life threatening emergencies” and deserve retirement benefits that reflect the toll of that work.

Should Newsom sign it, the bill would represent the first expansion of public employee pension benefits since 2013, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through reforms requiring newer employees to work longer and contribute more toward their retirements. That earlier overhaul came in response to the dot-com crash and the Great Recession, which drained tens of billions of dollars from California’s pension systems and raised alarms about their long-term solvency.

Those wounds haven’t fully healed. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the state’s largest pension fund, held about $637 billion in assets as of July 1 — roughly 85% of what it ultimately owes its 2 million members. To close that gap, CalPERS has steadily raised the rates it charges cities, counties and the state over the past decade, both to pay down unfunded liabilities faster and to reflect more conservative investment return expectations. Combined employer and employee contributions to the fund rose from $14.9 billion in 2017 to $30.2 billion last year.

The pension expansion is expected to add $282 million in near-term costs to CalPERS, covering the earlier retirement age and higher income cap. That figure could climb by hundreds of millions more if public safety agencies statewide opt into the maximum benefit levels, according to estimates from the state Department of Finance, which has urged Newsom to reject the bill.

Local governments across California have lined up against the measure, hoping the governor will veto it. Napa Mayor Scott Sedgley, a retired firefighter himself, said cities want to reward public safety workers but need the numbers to work. “We want to pay our police and fire and all our employees all we can, but it has to pencil out at the end,” he said.

Despite the uncertainty, some police and firefighter unions moved ahead as if the bill’s passage were assured. In Napa, for example, the city’s firefighter union secured a five-year contract that includes a clause reopening pension negotiations if Newsom signs AB 1383. Attorney Michael Youril of the law firm Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, which represents public agencies, said unions are eager not to get locked into contracts that don’t reflect the new benefit levels. “I would say there’s going to be immense pressure” on local governments to adopt the maximum allowable pension formulas, he said.

The legislation would benefit two labor groups that have been steady political allies to Newsom: California Professional Firefighters and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Firefighter union leaders pushed hard for the lowered retirement age, citing the toxic exposures and physical toll that can cut short both careers and lives in the profession.

Union representatives note the bill doesn’t fully reverse the 2013 reforms — before that law, police and firefighters could retire at 50 with even richer pension formulas. They describe the current proposal as a more modest update rather than a full rollback.

For the Peace Officers Research Association of California, which represents law enforcement unions statewide, the bill has been the top legislative priority this session. Association president Brian Marvel said he’s concerned about the possibility of a veto.

“We’re really hoping that the governor doesn’t want to go down that path because we really feel that this is a great opportunity for him to leave office addressing a huge issue within public safety,” Marvel said, pointing to ongoing struggles with police recruitment and retention. “We want to make sure that we have the necessary resources to be able to address what the community’s needs are.”

Marvel added that if Newsom vetoes the bill, law enforcement groups would have to “have serious conversations” about the decision — particularly if the governor pursues a future run for president.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Lawmakers Back Earlier Retirement, Bigger Pensions for First Responders — Newsom’s Decision Looms appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Since spring, seven people have died fighting fires in Colorado, Utah and Oregon: four firefighters killed in a burnover on Colorado’s Knowles Fire, two helicopter pilots lost in a crash in Utah, and a bulldozer contractor killed while cutting fireline in Oregon. Fires have scorched millions of acres and destroyed hundreds of structures throughout the region.

California, meanwhile, has been sending its own engines and crews out of state to help battle blazes in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. But even with its deep bench of resources, the state isn’t immune to the strain being felt nationwide. The country has been operating at Preparedness Level 5 — the highest tier of wildfire response — since mid-July, meaning virtually every available firefighting asset is already committed. Requests for additional crews and equipment are increasingly going unmet.

**A shift toward full suppression**

The backdrop to this fire season is a significant restructuring at the federal level. The administration has merged wildland firefighting crews from four Interior Department agencies — the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs — into a newly formed U.S. Wildland Fire Service. That agency, along with the U.S. Forest Service, is now pursuing what officials call “full suppression,” meaning nearly every new wildfire is targeted for rapid extinguishment rather than being allowed to burn under controlled conditions for ecological benefit.

Administration officials describe the approach as a necessary response to a summer marked by extreme heat, drought and dangerous fire behavior. Brian Fennessy, the former Orange County Fire Authority chief who now leads the new Wildland Fire Service, said the agency’s fire officials — not land managers — now have final say on whether a fire is left to burn.

“When it was a fire for resource benefit, fire (officials) may have had a say, but they did not hold the final decision,” Fennessy said, describing the previous system under the Interior Department. “Now, we hold, on the fire side, that final decision.”

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said his agency has not formally reinstated the old “10 a.m. rule” — a Depression-era policy requiring fires to be extinguished by the next morning — but acknowledged that the practical effect this summer has been much the same: aggressive knockdown of new fires rather than managed burns.

“We aren’t making any commitment to that time frame,” Schultz said, “but in terms of this time of the year, right now, we are not going to just sit back and let fire go and achieve other objectives. We’re going to be aggressively suppressing.”

Forest Service spokesperson Adrienne Freeman, who is based in California, said the calculus ultimately comes down to available resources. With national firefighting capacity stretched thin, there’s little room to manage fires for forest health right now.

“If something goes funny, we don’t know if we’re going to get the resources to manage it — and we pretty much know we aren’t because that’s not where houses are,” Freeman said.

**Concerns about long-term consequences**

Critics warn that treating full suppression as the default strategy — rather than one tool among several — could backfire over time. Decades of aggressive firefighting, combined with climate-driven drought, have already left many Western forests choked with dry, overgrown vegetation. Suppressing every fire without exception, some experts argue, only adds to that fuel buildup, setting the stage for future blazes that are harder to control.

Johanna Nosal, a forester who spent 15 years with the U.S. Forest Service in California, Colorado and Montana before taking a federal buyout in 2025, said prescribed burns can’t come close to matching the scale of what’s needed.

“We’re putting these fires out, and sometimes we’re successful at it… but it’s just a year-to-year Band-Aid,” Nosal said. “What eventually happens is you have a lack of resources and these weather periods that will create these huge blazes that no matter what you will do will keep spreading.”

Bobbie Scopa, a firefighter with 45 years of experience across local, state and federal agencies, estimates the government would need 30,000 to 40,000 more firefighters to actually make full suppression work — and even then, she said, “you still wouldn’t be successful.”

Reflecting the strain, incident commanders on Utah’s Widemouth 2 Fire, which has burned nearly 130,000 acres, say repeated requests for hand crews and engines have gone unfilled, forcing reliance on international assistance.

**California’s advantage — and its worries**

Few states are as well-positioned to absorb these federal changes as California, which has invested heavily in its own firefighting capacity over the years, including the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet. Cal Fire now employs more than 12,000 people, making it the largest state fire agency in the country and second in size only to the U.S. Forest Service among wildland firefighting forces worldwide.

Cal Fire officials, including spokesperson Emily Kilgore in the Tuolumne-Calaveras Unit, say they haven’t noticed disruptions in coordination with federal partners so far this season, including during the recent Dove Fire near Yosemite.

Still, state leaders are wary of what federal cutbacks could mean down the line. California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot warned in a May letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins that the state has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars — nearly half a billion since Gov. Gavin Newsom took office — covering wildfire safety projects on federal lands that the Forest Service has historically underfunded.

“While I understand the intention to operate a more efficient federal agency, many of these changes could impact our state’s wildfire readiness and create added public safety risks,” Crowfoot wrote.

Federal agencies remain responsible for protecting roughly half of California’s land, with Cal Fire handling mostly rural, privately owned wildlands that make up about a third of the state. The stakes of getting that partnership right were made painfully clear last year, when catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles killed 31 people, contributed to hundreds of additional deaths, and caused up to $131 billion in property and economic losses, according to a UCLA analysis.

**An agency in transition**

The Forest Service itself is undergoing sweeping changes, including relocating its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and consolidating research operations in Fort Collins, Colorado. The agency has shed 16% of its workforce since 2024, according to U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, an Oregon Democrat who has pressed Schultz on the reorganization’s risks.

Salinas and others worry that separating fire crews from the land management agencies they once worked alongside could sever critical lines of communication — for instance, warnings about not bulldozing firelines through habitat for endangered species or culturally sensitive sites.

Fennessy disputes that concern, saying fire personnel and land managers remain co-located and in daily contact. “I question the motive or intent of those that want to make that argument,” he said.

Investigators are also still examining whether the broader reorganization played any role in the deaths of the firefighters killed on Colorado’s Knowles Fire in late June. Fennessy called any suggestion of a connection “ludicrous” and said he’s confident, based on his knowledge of the ongoing investigation, that “there is absolutely zero connection.”

For now, officials across the West acknowledge there’s no tidy resolution to the tension between protecting lives and property today and maintaining healthier forests for tomorrow.

“There’s no simple answer,” Scopa said. “We’re not gonna put out all the fires. We’re never going to be successful… The environment is not conducive to that, the fuels are not conducive to that, the staffing is not conducive to that.”

Original source: CalMatters

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The bills, which have drawn support from both parties in Sacramento, are set to come before the Senate Appropriations Committee later this month. One measure would lower the retirement age for public safety workers from 57 to 55. Another would establish a new deferred retirement option for California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters. A third would raise wages for Cal Fire personnel.

Supporters argue that boosting compensation and retirement benefits is essential to recruiting and keeping first responders on the job, and several lawmakers have said they’d be willing to trim spending elsewhere to make room for the increases. During a Senate hearing in June on the retirement age bill, state Sen. Tony Strickland, a Huntington Beach Republican, pointed to the heroics of firefighters who responded to a chemical leak in Orange County in May.

“I still get goosebumps for these firefighters and their families that had to know that they’re putting their lives on the line to save that explosion from happening, which they actually end up doing,” Strickland said. “You can’t put a price tag on that.”

Except, in this case, there is a price tag — and it’s a steep one. The bill lowering the retirement age alone would require an extra $282 million a year in contributions to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and would add $4.8 billion to the pension system’s long-term liabilities, according to estimates.

Whether Newsom would sign any of the measures if they land on his desk is an open question. Labor groups representing firefighters and correctional officers were among his biggest financial backers during the 2021 recall effort, but the governor has shown he’s willing to say no to public safety unions when cost is a concern. Last year, he vetoed a bill that would have raised Cal Fire salaries, citing budget pressures.

In other Sacramento news, nurses at Kaiser Permanente are raising alarms about workplace surveillance tools and artificial intelligence software the health care giant uses to monitor phone-based patient interactions. Nurses who staff Kaiser’s advice and triage lines — often speaking with patients experiencing medical emergencies, mental health crises or difficult diagnoses — say they feel pressure to wrap up calls within 15 minutes, with longer conversations sometimes triggering scrutiny from supervisors or performance reviews.

“People can get hurt,” said Charlotte Capulong, who has worked in nurse call centers for 22 years. “You aren’t calling Comcast. We’re dealing with life here.”

Nurses say Kaiser uses software to flag potential inefficiency or slow response times, and that the company began testing an AI tool in 2024 designed to evaluate the tone and empathy in nurses’ voices. Kaiser says its use of AI includes human oversight and is meant to safeguard patient care, and the company denies relying on “average handle time” metrics to judge employee performance.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan bill meant to give small businesses more time to fix disability access violations has quietly died in the Assembly, despite passing the Senate with support from both parties. The measure, authored by Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican, would have given business owners 120 days to correct violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act before facing a lawsuit. Niello has argued the change is needed to curb what he considers opportunistic litigation from law firms and their clients.

But Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a San Jose Democrat who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, declined to schedule a hearing for the bill, effectively killing it. Kalra said the proposal “completely undermines the ADA” and that Niello had not agreed to amendments floated during private negotiations. Niello says he intends to bring the measure back if reelected in November. Longtime Capitol lobbyist Chris Micheli called the outcome unusual, noting it’s rare for a bill to be blocked in its second legislative house through closed-door dealings rather than a formal vote.

In a separate development, the private prison and detention contractor GEO Group has agreed to pay more than $100,000 to settle allegations that it failed to protect the safety of detainees working inside one of its Central Valley immigration detention facilities — a outcome cheered by immigrant rights advocates.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Can California Afford Bigger Pensions for Police and Firefighters? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Three measures advancing through the Legislature would either boost pay for Cal Fire firefighters or expand retirement benefits for public safety workers across California. Backers say the changes are a fair trade-off for people who put their lives on the line and endure the kind of physical toll that can cut careers short. So far, the bills have drawn strong bipartisan support in the Legislature.

“Every day has a cost, and it’s one that we pay with our lives,” Darrell Roberts, president of California Professional Firefighters, told lawmakers at a recent hearing on a bill that would let public safety employees retire at 55 instead of 57. “This job is physically and mentally demanding in the extreme, and asking us to work until 57 is pushing us not just to our limit but beyond it.”

The proposals aren’t cheap. Together, they could add hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new state spending and billions more in long-term financial obligations — a tough pill for Gov. Gavin Newsom to swallow given warnings of budget deficits ahead.

The retirement-related bills, in particular, are stirring memories of California’s pension crisis during the Great Recession, when the state’s major retirement funds lost tens of billions of dollars almost overnight. Critics point back to benefit increases signed by then-Gov. Gray Davis in the years before that crash as a cautionary tale.

Marcia Fritz, an accountant and longtime pension watchdog, sees history repeating itself. She noted that during Davis’ time in office, pension funds were riding high on a booming stock market driven largely by tech stocks — much like today. CalPERS and CalSTRS, the state’s two largest pension systems, still haven’t fully recovered from recession-era losses, though both have recently exceeded their investment targets thanks to a tech-fueled market rebound.

“They’re drinking the Kool-Aid that the markets are never going to go down,” Fritz said of lawmakers backing the bills. “We’re the ones paying for it with reduced services.”

California reined in retirement benefits for employees hired after 2012 under a law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, which required workers to stay on the job longer to earn a full pension and to contribute more toward their own retirement. CalPERS estimates that reform saved government agencies $4 billion in its first decade and projects it will save another $24 billion over the next 10 years.

To taxpayer advocates, those savings are proof the Brown-era reforms are working as intended. Public safety unions see it differently, arguing that the savings show government agencies can afford to sweeten benefits without abandoning the 2012 framework altogether.

Here’s what the three bills would do:

Assembly Bill 1383 would lower the retirement age for public safety workers from 57 to 55. It would also let unions negotiate richer pension formulas — up to 3% of salary for every year worked — and raise the cap on pensionable earnings by nearly $60,000, to $249,000 annually.

Assembly Bill 1054 would establish a new deferred retirement option for California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters, allowing them to bank money during their final years on the job and collect it as a lump sum upon retirement — an incentive meant to keep experienced personnel working longer.

Assembly Bill 2129 would push for a new pay formula for Cal Fire firefighters, encouraging the governor’s office to bring their salaries closer to — though not necessarily equal to — the average paid by 20 local fire departments around the state.

The cost question

The bill lowering the retirement age carries the steepest price tag. CalPERS estimates it would require $282 million more in annual contributions and add $4.8 billion to the fund’s long-term liabilities. If local governments choose to offer even more generous pension formulas under the bill, that cost could climb to $353 million annually, with additional strain on the fund’s finances. Those figures don’t include California’s 20 independently run county pension systems.

That price tag has put city and county governments in opposition. “We do definitely support strong retirement benefits, but those benefits must remain sustainable and fiscally responsible for our local agencies,” said Johnnie Pina, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, during a recent Senate hearing.

The financial impact of the other two bills is murkier. Supporters of the CHP and Cal Fire deferred retirement plan say it’s designed to be cost-neutral, though similar programs run by cities and counties have ended up costing more than expected. The bill would require CalPERS to review the program every five years, giving lawmakers room to make adjustments down the line.

The Cal Fire pay bill is even harder to pin down financially, since it’s written to give the governor’s office flexibility rather than a mandate. It calls on Newsom to negotiate “in good faith” toward narrowing the pay gap between Cal Fire and local fire departments — a gap a 2023 state compensation survey put at 11% to 29% in favor of local departments.

“Instead of being the lowest paid, we will inevitably be somewhere in the middle” if the bill passes, said Terry McHale, a lobbyist for the firefighters union, at an earlier hearing this year.

Newsom vetoed a similar, more forceful version of this bill last year, warning it would “create significant cost pressures for the state and circumvent the collective bargaining process.” That earlier proposal was projected to cost between $373 million and $609 million in its first year alone.

Cal Fire’s union is essentially seeking a benefit that only one other state employee group enjoys: automatic raises tied to what other agencies pay. CHP officers already receive annual pay bumps based on compensation at several major California police departments, a perk no other state employee union has secured through legislation rather than negotiation.

What happens next

All three bills face a critical test later this month in the Senate Appropriations Committee, which can shelve legislation over cost concerns. Bills that clear that hurdle typically have a strong chance of reaching the governor’s desk.

At a recent hearing, several lawmakers said recruiting and retaining first responders was worth the cost, even if it meant trimming other programs. They pointed to the response to a chemical spill in Orange County this past May as an example of the risks emergency workers take on without hesitation.

“I still get goosebumps for these firefighters and their families that had to know that they were putting their lives on the line to save that explosion from happening, which they actually ended up doing,” said Sen. Tony Strickland, a Huntington Beach Republican. “You can’t put a price tag on that.”

Public safety unions have long been a fixture at the Capitol. Since 2019, firefighter unions have contributed $6.2 million to lawmakers and campaigns, while the Peace Officers Research Association of California has spent $4.5 million, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database. Both California Professional Firefighters and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association were also major donors backing Newsom during the 2021 recall election.

Still, that support doesn’t guarantee the governor’s signature. As mayor of San Francisco during the Great Recession, Newsom championed a ballot measure requiring city workers to contribute more of their own money toward their pensions — a track record that suggests he may scrutinize these latest proposals just as closely.

Original source: CalMatters

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Northwest of Los Angeles, the Mountain Fire exploded in size and prompted evacuation orders for more than 10,000 people as it threatened 3,500 structures in suburban communities, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo, according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom. He said he has requested federal assistance for the area east of the Pacific coast city of Ventura.

The blaze was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. A thick plume of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the sky Wednesday, blanketing whole neighborhoods and limiting visibility for firefighters and evacuees. The fire grew from less than half of a square mile to 16 square miles (62 square kilometers) in little more than five hours.

Ventura County Fire Captain Trevor Johnson described crews racing with their engines to homes threatened by the flames to save lives.

“This is as intense as it gets. The hair on the back of the firefighters’ neck I’m sure was standing up,” he said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

Two people suffered apparent smoke inhalation and were taken to hospitals, fire officials said. No firefighters reported significant injuries.

The erratic winds and limited visibility grounded fixed-wing aircraft, and gusts topped 61 mph (98 kph), said weather service meteorologist Bryan Lewis. Water-dropping helicopters were still flying.

First responders pleaded with residents to evacuate. Deputies made contact with 14,000 people to urge them to leave as embers spread up to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away and sparked new flames.

“This fire is moving dangerously fast,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said.

Aerial footage from local television networks showed dozens of homes in flames across several neighborhoods as embers were whipped from home to home. Other footage captured horses trotting alongside evacuating vehicles.

Jade Katz, who said she is disabled and does not drive, waited for a friend to pick her up near her Camarillo Heights home with a suitcase full of medication and Bella, her Great Dane service dog. But the friend couldn’t reach her, so first responders sent a squad car to escort her to safety as she watched the neighborhood burn.

Officials said they were using all resources, including water-dropping helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft dropping fire retardant, but it was still burning out of control Wednesday afternoon. Andrew Dowd, a Ventura County fire spokesperson, said he did not have details of how many structures had been damaged.

Gus Garcia, who owns a ranch south of the fire, said he’s waiting to see whether conditions will change to decide if he should evacuate his horses and cattle. Around 12:30 p.m., his animals were still safe and he was trying to stay out of the way as others got their livestock out.

His ranch is surrounded by others with horses and alpaca, and Garcia said his neighbors in the canyon did not seem panicked.

“The horse community, they prepare for this because it’s always a possibility up here,” he said.

Meanwhile to the south, Los Angeles County Fire Department crews scrambled to contain a wildfire near Malibu’s Broad Beach as authorities briefly shut down the Pacific Coast Highway as flames burned near multimillion-dollar properties. Residents were urged to shelter in place while aircraft dropped water on the 50-acre (20-hectare) Broad Fire. It was 15% contained around 12:30 p.m. with forward progress stopped. Fire officials said two structures burned.

The National Weather Service office for the Los Angeles area amended its red flag warning for increased fire danger with a rare “particularly dangerous situation” label, and officials in several counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees amid the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.

With predicted gusts between 50 mph (80 kph) and 100 mph (160 kph) and humidity levels as low as 8%, parts of Southern California could experience conditions ripe for “extreme and life-threatening” fire behavior into Thursday, the weather service said.

Forecasters also issued red flag warnings until Thursday from California’s central coast through the San Francisco Bay Area and into counties to the north, where strong winds were also expected.

Utilities in California began powering down equipment during high winds and extreme fire danger after a series of massive and deadly wildfires in recent years were sparked by electrical lines and other infrastructure. On Wednesday, more than 65,000 customers in Southern California were without power preventatively, and upwards of 20,000 in Northern California.

Wednesday’s fires were burning in the same areas of other recent destructive fires, including the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and destroyed 1,600 homes near Los Angeles, and the the 2017 Thomas Fire, which destroyed more than a thousand homes and other structures in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Southern California Edison has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle claims after its equipment was blamed for both blazes.

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At least a dozen people, mainly firefighters, were treated for injuries that were mostly heat-related, authorities said. One person from Orange County was burned. No deaths have been reported.

The wildfires have been endangering tens of thousands of homes and other structures across the region after they sprung to life during a triple-digit heat wave over the weekend. Other major fires were burning in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada, where about 20,000 people had to flee a blaze outside Reno.

In the tight-knit community of Wrightwood that sits on the Pacific Crest Trail, authorities implored residents to evacuate the exploding Bridge Fire, which burned more than a dozen homes in the area.

Resident Erin Arias said she was racing up the mountain when she got the sudden order to leave and did, grabbing her passport and dog. On Wednesday, she and her husband doused water on the roof of their still-standing home. Their cat was missing, she said.

“It’s absolutely scary,” Arias said, looking at the burned embers of her neighbor’s home. “We’re really lucky.”

UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said the fire moved extraordinarily fast across complex terrain, likely giving Wrightwood residents less time to evacuate than usual and surprising even seasoned fire officials.

The Bridge Fire “had to go up mountain sides, burn down slope, jump across valleys, burn across new ridges, and then make it down slope again at least two other times in effectively one burning period,” he said.

California is only now heading into the teeth of the wildfire season but already has seen nearly three times as much acreage burn than during all of 2023. The White House said President Joe Biden was monitoring the wildfires in the West and urged residents to heed state and local evacuation orders.

Cooler temperatures were expected to potentially start tempering fire activity as the week progresses.

The full extent of the damage was not immediately known as firefighters battled multiple fires simultaneously. The three blazes include:

— The Airport Fire in Orange County that burned over 35 square miles (91 square kilometers). The fire was 5% contained Wednesday night and was reportedly sparked by heavy equipment operating in the area. Orange County Fire Capt. Steve Concialdi said eight firefighters were injured, mostly heat-related. One resident suffered smoke inhalation and another burns, he said. Several homes burned in El Cariso Village.

— The Line Fire in the San Bernardino National Forest that was 18% contained Wednesday and charred 57 square miles (148 square kilometers). The blaze injured three firefighters. Authorities said it was caused by arson in Highland. A suspect was arrested Tuesday.

— The Bridge Fire east of Los Angeles that grew tenfold in a day, burning 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) and torching at least 33 homes and six cabins and forcing the evacuation of 10,000 people. The cause of the fire was not immediately known. It was zero percent contained Wednesday night.

With so many fires raging at once, crews were at their limits, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said.

“As a region, we’re currently at drawdown for fire personnel and resources,” he said, adding that authorities have requested assistance from Northern California and nearby states.

Gov. Gavin Newsom sent National Guard troops in to help with evacuations.

In El Cariso Village, a community of 250 along Highway 74 in Riverside County, an Associated Press photographer saw at least 10 homes and several cars engulfed in flames.

Kevin Fetterman, Orange County Fire Authority Incident Commander, said the blaze has been difficult to tame because of the terrain and dry conditions and because some areas hadn’t burned in decades.

More than 5,500 homes in Riverside County were under evacuation orders, affecting more than 19,000 residents. Several recreational cabins and structures in the Cleveland National Forest were damaged.

In San Bernardino County, some 65,600 homes and buildings were under threat by the Line Fire, and residents along the southern edge of Big Bear Lake were told to leave Tuesday.

The Line Fire blanketed the area with a thick cloud of dark smoke, which provided shade for firefighters trying to get ahead of winds expected later Wednesday, said Fabian Herrera, a spokesperson for the Line Fire.

A man from the town of Norco suspected of starting the Line Fire on Sept. 5 was arrested and charged with arson, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. Officials did not specify what was used to start the fire.

Investigators collected evidence from the delivery driver’s vehicle and home that suggests he could have been involved in starting other fires, San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said Wednesday.

On the Nevada border with California near Reno, the Davis Fire forced thousands of people to evacuate over the weekend, destroyed one home and a dozen structures and charred nearly 9 square miles (23 square kilometers) of timber and brush along the Sierra Nevada’s eastern front.

Rich Meyr and Evelyn Kelley were the first arrivals at an evacuation center set up Wednesday at a recreation center in south Reno. Both said they refused to evacuate previous fires but decided to play it safe this time.

“My son’s wedding is Saturday. I threw all the flowers and gowns in the RV and we left. It looks like a garden shop inside that RV,” Kelley said. “But who wants to burn alive?”

More than 600 firefighters kept the blaze from growing Wednesday despite high winds that grounded all aircraft that had dropped retardant on the flames over the past two days. The fire was about 30% contained Wednesday night.

Elsewhere, a Colorado man was charged with arson after an investigation into a wildfire this summer that destroyed 29 homes and caused more than $30 million in property damage near Loveland, Colorado.

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Thayer reported from El Cariso Village, Taxin from Santa Ana, California, and Rodriguez from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, Amy Hanson in Helena, Montana, Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles and Thomas Peipert in Denver contributed.

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KLAMATH RIVER, Calif. (AP) — California firefighters made gains against the state’s deadliest and largest wildfire of the year, but forecasters warned Thursday that spiking temperatures and plunging humidity levels could create conditions for further growth.

After five days of no containment, the McKinney Fire in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border was 10% surrounded by Wednesday evening. Bulldozers and hand crews were making progress carving firebreaks around much of the rest of the blaze, fire officials said.

At the fire’s southeastern corner, evacuation orders for sections of Yreka, home to about 7,800 people, were downgraded to warnings, allowing residents to return home but with a caution that the situation remained dangerous.

About 1,300 people remained under evacuation orders, officials said at a community meeting Wednesday evening.

The fire didn’t advance much at midweek, following several days of brief but heavy rain from thunderstorms that provided cloudy, damper weather. But as the clouds clear and humidity levels drops in the coming days, the fire could roar again, authorities warned.

“This is a sleeping giant right now,” said Darryl Laws, a unified incident commander on the blaze.

Weekend temperatures could reach triple digits as the region dries out again, said meteorologist Brian Nieuwenhuis with the National Weather Service office in Medford, Oregon.

“The heat, the dry conditions, along with afternoon breezes, that’s the kind of thing that could keep the fire pretty active,” he said Thursday.

The blaze broke out last Friday and has charred nearly 92 square miles (238 square kms) of forestland, left tinder-dry by drought. More than 100 homes and other buildings have burned and four bodies have been found, including two in a burned car in a driveway.

The blaze was driven at first by fierce winds ahead of a thunderstorm cell. More storms earlier this week proved a mixed blessing. A drenching rain Tuesday dumped up to 3 inches (7.6 cm) on some eastern sections of the blaze but most of the fire area got next to nothing, said Dennis Burns, a fire behavior analyst.

The latest storm also brought concerns about possible river flooding and mudslides. A private contractor in a pickup truck who was aiding the firefighting effort was hurt when a bridge gave out and washed away the vehicle, Kreider said. The contractor had non-life-threatening injuries, she said.

The progress against the flames came too late for many people in the scenic hamlet of Klamath River, which was home to about 200 people before the fire reduced many of the homes to ashes, along with the post office, community center and other buildings.

At an evacuation center Wednesday, Bill Simms said that three of the four victims were his neighbors. Two were a married couple who lived up the road.

“I don’t get emotional about stuff and material things,” Simms said. “But when you hear my next-door neighbors died … that gets a little emotional.”

Their names haven’t been officially confirmed, which could take several days, said Courtney Kreider, a spokesperson with the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office.

Simms, a 65-year-old retiree, bought his property six years ago as a second home with access to hunting and fishing. He went back to check on his property Tuesday and found it was destroyed.

“The house, the guest house and the RV were gone. It’s just wasteland, devastation,” Simms said. He found the body of one of his two cats, which he buried. The other cat is still missing. He was able to take his two dogs with him to the shelter.

Harlene Schwander, 82, lost the home she had just moved into a month ago to be closer to her son and daughter-in-law. Their home survived but her house was torched.

Schwander, an artist, said she only managed to grab a few family photos and some jewelry before evacuating. Everything else — including her art collection — went up in flames.

“I’m sad. Everybody says it was just stuff, but it was all I had,” she said.

Meanwhile, firefighters expected Thursday to fully surround a 1,000-acre (404-hectare) spot fire on the northern edge of the McKinney Fire.

California and much of the rest of the West is in drought and wildfire danger is high, with the historically worst of the fire season still to come. Fires are burning in Montana, Idaho and Nebraska and have destroyed homes and threaten communities.

Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. California has seen its largest, most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the last five years. In 2018, a massive blaze in the Sierra Nevada foothills destroyed much of the city of Paradise and killed 85 people, the most deaths from a U.S. wildfire in a century.

In northwestern Montana, a fire that has destroyed at least four homes and forced the evacuation of about 150 residences west of Flathead Lake continued to be pushed north by winds on Wednesday, fire officials said.

The Moose Fire in Idaho has burned more than 85 square miles (220 square km) in the Salmon-Challis National Forest while threatening homes, mining operations and fisheries near the town of Salmon.

And a wildfire in northwestern Nebraska led to evacuations and destroyed or damaged several homes near the small city of Gering.

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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Thousands of wildfires ignite in the U.S. each year, and each one requires firefighters to make quick decisions, often in difficult conditions like high winds and lightning.

Crews and managers must determine when to bring in aircraft, what time of day is best to battle flames, whether to evacuate residents and even if certain fires should be extinguished at all.

In the West, which sees many of the country’s largest fires, they do all this amid the backdrop of prolonged drought and other climate change-induced conditions that have made wildfires more destructive. Other challenges include a century of reflexive wildfire suppression and overgrown forests, experts say, and communities that have crept into fire-prone areas.

Russ Lane, fire operations chief for the Washington state Department of Natural Resources, explains how some key firefighting decisions are made:

WHY DO FIRE MANAGERS LET SOME WILDFIRES BURN?

Sometimes fires fit a beneficial land management goal, like when they burn in a wilderness area or national park.

Fires are part of the natural forest cycle, and “at times that’s the right approach,” said Lane, who is in his 35th season as a firefighter, much of that spent in western Oregon. He joined Washington’s natural resources agency in 2019.

Also, wildfires sometimes burn in areas where it is unsafe to put firefighters.

WHEN DO FIRE MANAGERS DEPLOY AIRCRAFT?

Planes or helicopters are used if a wildfire is burning too intensely to send in ground forces, or if aircraft are the best way to deliver water or retardant, Lane said.

“You want to hit a fire quick so it stays small,” Lane said.

The goal is to keep them from erupting into megafires. Cal Fire, California’s firefighting agency, keeps an average of 95% of blazes to 10 acres (4 hectares) or less.

But Lane said aircraft alone are usually not enough to extinguish a fire. “It takes boots on the ground.”

Aircraft also can face numerous visibility limitations when trying to make water drops on a wildfire.

HOW HAS TECHNOLOGY HELPED?

When it comes to early detection, one innovation is replacing fire lookout towers staffed by humans with cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from morning fog. There are 800 such cameras scattered across California, Nevada and Oregon.

Fire managers also routinely summon military drones to fly over fires at night, using heat imaging to map their boundaries and hot spots. They can use satellite imagery to plot the course of smoke and ash.

WHAT IS THE BEST TIME OF DAY TO ATTACK A BLAZE?

Generally the heat of a summer day is not the best time to fight wildfires.

“We are pretty successful in the morning, late evening or overnight,” Lane said.

ARE WILDFIRES HARDER TO BATTLE IN TIMBER OR GRASSLANDS?

Dry lightning puts dozens of fires on the landscape, Lane said, and weather is a major factor in their spread.

Wildfires in grassland tend to grow more quickly, and are more susceptible to expanding when there are high winds, Lane said. Fires in timberlands don’t grow as fast, but they are more difficult to extinguish.

“With grass, a little rain and it goes out,” Lane said.

HOW TO SAVE HOUSES WHEN FIRES ARE CLOSE?

Lane said the building material used on a house, and the nearby vegetation, are big factors in determining if a house can be saved when fire approaches.

Houses with wooden roofs and lots of flammable vegetation around them are hardest to save. Usually a fire crew will spray water around a house to protect it.

Sometimes they will burn out the vegetation around a house to starve an approaching wildfire. If the homeowner keeps brush well away from a home prior to a fire that is a big help, Lane said.

WHERE DO FIRE NAMES COME FROM?

Usually a fire is named by the first unit of firefighters on the scene. Most of the time the name reflects a nearby geographic feature, such as a creek or valley.

California’s massive Dixie Fire, for instance, was named after the road where it started on July 14.

WHY DO FIREFIGHTERS SPEND SO MUCH TIME DIGGING LINES?

“Every fire has to have a dirt trail around it,” Lane said. “That’s to separate the fuel from the fire.”

Firefighters also get help when the flames burn toward a river, a rocky area or a road. “Separating fuel from fire is what stops them,” he said.

WHO LEADS A PARTICULAR FIREFIGHTING EFFORT?

Wildfires get one of five ratings, with Type 5 the least dangerous and Type 1 the most dangerous. More than 95% of all fires are smaller Type 4 or 5 wildfires and are quickly put out by local firefighters.

Larger fires, like the ones the Washington state Department of Natural Resources responds to, are assigned an incident commander, said Janet Pearce, agency spokeswoman.

The commander creates a set of objectives, which guides the command and general staff. An operations section chief then devises the strategy for the operational firefighting effort.

WHEN DO YOU ORDER RESIDENTS TO IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE?

Emergency managers consider fire behavior, predicted weather and the amount of time it will take to evacuate, when making the decision to order people to leave, Lane said.

They also consider the availability of shelters and the potential for harm or loss of human life.

Occasionally, an order is given to “shelter in place.” This is typically done when there is either no time to escape an oncoming fire, or it would be more hazardous to evacuate than remain in place, he said.

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After an extensive review of fire damage, Gov. Gavin Newsom requested a presidential major disaster declaration for eight counties, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, told a briefing near Sacramento.

If approved, the declaration would provide a wide range of assistance including housing, food aid, unemployment and governmental emergency costs, Ghilarducci said.

Nearly 43,000 Californians were under under evacuation orders and more than 500 households were in shelters, he said.

New concerns were developing at the explosive Caldor Fire southwest of Lake Tahoe, the famed alpine lake straddling the California-Nevada state line and surrounded by peaks of the Sierra Nevada and resort communities.

The Caldor Fire has become the nation’s number one priority for firefighting resources, said Chief Thom Porter, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

“It is knocking on the door to the Lake Tahoe basin,” Porter said. “We have all efforts in place to keep it out of the basin but we do need to also be aware that is a possibility based on the way the fires have been burning.”

Porter said he personally did not believe the fire would get into the basin but that he could be proved wrong.

The Caldor Fire has incinerated more than 166 square miles (430 square kilometers) of El Dorado National Forest and continuing assessments showed 447 buildings destroyed. More than 17,000 structures were still under threat.

Two police officers from the Sacramento County city of Galt were in critical condition after a head-on traffic collision while they were headed to the Caldor Fire under a law enforcement mutual aid deployment, Ghilarducci said.

To the north, containment increased to 40% at the Dixie Fire, which has burned more than 1,130 square miles (2,926 square kilometers) in the northern Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades. Ongoing assessments showed 1,259 buildings destroyed, including 678 single-family homes, Cal Fire said. Nearly 13,000 structures remained threatened.

In Nevada, public schools in the Reno and Sparks area and parts of Lake Tahoe were closed Monday due to wildfire smoke, affecting 67,000 students.

In Northern California, where most of the blazes are burning, there were no red flag warnings for critical conditions but the seven-day outlook called for moderate fire danger. In Southern California, meanwhile, moist ocean air has been keeping skies cloudy and temperatures cooler than normal well into each day.

Porter said that meant there was low potential for large new fires in Southern California, allowing firefighting resources to be surged from south to north.

While Southern California has so far escaped large-scale wildfires this year, Los Angeles officials on Monday urged residents to be aware of what’s going on in the north because the region’s high fire season is typically late in the year when dry, gusty Santa Ana winds blast out of the interior and flow toward the coast.

“That awareness is going to help us when it happens here in Southern California,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Ralph Terrazas said during a briefing to display the city’s fleet of firefighting helicopters at Van Nuys Airport.

The mix of spring growth dried out by summer heat and high winds creates “a dangerous condition that could lead to large, fast-moving brush fires,” he said.

California’s fires were among more than 90 large, active blazes in the U.S. on Monday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Climate change has made the West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.

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