PHOENIX — Wet weather last year and predicted hot, dry spring and summer are going to result in a “very extreme” potential for wildfires this year according to the state’s fire management officer.
And the situation is only complicated by the fact that the state is having trouble hiring people to fight those fires once they break out.
“With the above-normal rainfall we had through the monsoon season and the above-normal rainfall we had in December, have put a lot more vegetation and and a lot more growth onto our vegetation,” John Truett said Thursday. “Then we had the drier-than-normal conditions the last three months which now has dried out all those fuels to be available for wildland fires.”
In fact, Truett said, even the areas that were burned in the last two years — 900,000 acres in 2020 and 500,000 in 2021 — are not immune from being at risk again.
“All those have gotten a lot of grass growing in them,” he said. “So they could actually re-burn now.”
But as Truett noted, the extreme drought throughout the West has left Arizona in “heavy competition” with other federal, state and local agencies to find qualified people to fight those fires.
“We’re having a hard time filling our vacancies,” he said.
“We go out and recruit,” Truett said. “We just don’t have enough folks that are willing to come out and do the job that we do.”
He said the state currently has more than 80 firefighters, declining to say how many vacancies remain in the agency. But it’s not just the permanent jobs, Truett said, with efforts now to fill seasonal positions.
What that leaves, he said, is trying to stop fires from starting in the first place.
Some of that involves the normal warnings about burning on windy days, making sure if you’re towing a trailer that the chain is not scraping the ground and causing sparks, and not pulling a vehicle into high grasses where the hot catalytic converter could ignite materials.
On a more proactive level, the state is trying to reduce hazardous vegetation.
The state has historically tried to “treat” about 4,000 to 5,000 acres a year, with a goal of hitting 20,000 acres this year. And that doesn’t count similar programs run by the U.S. Forest Service.
One thing helping to meet that goal is that the state is training low-risk inmates to do some of this thinning.
On Wednesday, the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry graduated its latest crew of more than 100 to help with that job. And Gov. Doug Ducey said he is proposing an additional $36 million for the Healthy Forest Initiative his budget for the coming fiscal year for continued expansion of inmate crews and other programs to help clear hazardous vegetation, bringing the total allocated to more than $42 million.
State corrections officials said the program, which involves inmates operating equipment and machinery used in the timber industry, can get them skills that will help them find employment after they complete their sentence.
The governor said he also is putting another $17 million into a revolving fund that would be used to reimburse local fire departments that help respond to wildfires.
Ducey sidestepped a question of what role he believes that climate change has in the extreme danger of fire.
“I’ll leave it to others to talk about what effect climate change or change in the climate has had on that,” he responded. “But it’s certainly the lack of precipitation, and precipitation during the customary months have affected and effect this condition greatly.”
The governor has a mixed record on the issue of climate change.
In 2015, the governor said that, after being brief by experts, he is convinced the climate is changing.
“It’s going to get warmer here,” he said at the time. “What I am skeptical about is what human activity has to do with it.”
By 2019 he was willing to put aside that skepticism. Ducey told Capitol Media Services that it only makes sense that people and what they do are having an impact.
“Humans are part of the earth, then environment and the ecosystem,” he said. But the governor has shown no interest in changing Arizona laws and regulations to reduce greenhouse gases.
In that 2019 interview, however, Ducey rejected the idea that California should adopt California-style limits on vehicle emissions which are tougher than those required by federal law. While originally instituted to fight smog, manufacturers have since agreed with California to increase fuel efficiency to reduce all emissions, including greenhouse gases.
“I think you can have a growing economy economy and an improving environment,” the governor said. “That’s what we’re having in Arizona versus what California’s having, which is a mass exodus.”
On Thursday, press aide C.J. Karamargin said the view of his boss have not changed and that Ducey remains opposed to tightening up vehicle emission standards even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says transportation sources are the largest source of greenhouse gases, exceeding electricity generation and industrial sources.
But Karamargin said the state is doing its part.
“Arizona is committed to maintaining a diverse energy portfolio which directly impacts the issue,” he said. Karamargin also said the state is now home to many firms that can help address the issue, including Lucid Motors which produces an all-electric vehicle in Casa Grande and companies that manufacture the lithium-ion batteries necessary for these kind of vehicles.
“If you look at the types of industries, the types of manufacturers we are pursuing and we are getting, there can be no doubt that Gov. Ducey has his eye on the future and the technologies that can address these issues,” he said.
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