It's bigger than that. To save money, the cities/counties have skeleton crews, so when there is a fire, its mandatory work for everyone. It not only costs more to work people overtime than just having more people to start with, and it also leaves just a few people at their home stations to deal with emergencies at home. And in fire season, a lot of areas will go up while the majority of the crew is away at another fire. I think they rely on emergency funds to pay for it.
To make up the shortfall of people, CA also uses prisoners as slave labor at like $1 an hour to help fight fires. To be fair, the prisoners are volunteers, but they risk their lives for no real reward. So "real firemen" get $100k in overtime to fight the big fires, felons get enough to buy lunch at Olive Garden. Felons can't be "real" firemen when they get out of prison, so its not like on the job training.
And then lets talk about how CA is a hot mess when dealing with the fire damage... FEMA gave Newsom a bunch of trailers for the fire victims to put on their property to live in during rebuilding. Newsom instead gave them to the chronically homeless, who can't use them because you have to have a permanent place to park them. That left the fire victims homeless while the trailers sat unused.
Newsom signed a bill making it so that the energy companies that caused some of the fires don't have to pay for the damage, and the insurance won't cover it because the energy companies are responsible.
Many counties have changed building codes so the homes can't rebuilt. Rebuilding has been a nightmare for the for victims.
It's bigger than that. To save money, the cities/counties have skeleton crews, so when there is a fire, its mandatory work for everyone. It not only costs more to work people overtime than just having more people to start with, and it also leaves just a few people at their home stations to deal with emergencies at home. And in fire season, a lot of areas will go up while the majority of the crew is away at another fire. I think they rely on emergency funds to pay for it.
To make up the shortfall of people, CA also uses prisoners as slave labor at like $1 an hour to help fight fires. To be fair, the prisoners are volunteers, but they risk their lives for no real reward. So "real firemen" get $100k in overtime to fight the big fires, felons get enough to buy lunch at Olive Garden. Felons can't be "real" firemen when they get out of prison, so its not like on the job training.
And then lets talk about how CA is a hot mess when dealing with the fire damage... FEMA gave Newsom a bunch of trailers for the fire victims to put on their property to live in during rebuilding. Newsom instead gave them to the chronically homeless, who can't use them because you have to have a permanent place to park them. That left the fire victims homeless while the trailers sat unused.
Newsom signed a bill making it so that the energy companies that caused some of the fires don't have to pay for the damage, and the insurance won't cover it because the energy companies are responsible.
Many counties have changed building codes so the homes can't rebuilt. Rebuilding has been a nightmare for the for victims.