The Brief

On the surface, fighting wildfires doesn’t appear to require delicacy or nuance. Fire bosses speak in the language of war: weapons, attack, suppression, control.

But to effectively manage a wildfire is to engage in an intricate game of multi-dimensional chess: moving firefighters and equipment where they are most needed or where they are predicted to be required, then coaxing and caring for these resources so that they can continue to be used and moved around a fiery board.

Take the Park Fire, which is blazing through Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties, already consuming about 415,000 acres. Now burning for two weeks, it’s the fourth largest fire in California history.

It’s a difficult fire to manage because of the steep, remote terrain, its early start in the season and the nearly 30,000 other wildfires around the country this year that have been gobbling up firefighters and equipment.

“Some people might ask, ‘Are there enough resources in California?’,” Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler said during a news conference last week from the Borel Fire in Kern County. A fire chief’s standard response is ‘Yes, but we could use more.’ Thanks to mutual aid, help is here and more is coming from around the state, nation and world, Tyler said.

As Cal Fire wrestles with long shifts, stressful conditions, sizzling heatwaves and budget restraints, California’s statewide mutual aid pact and reciprocal assistance from crews across the U.S. and other nations are critical to ensuring there’s enough firefighters to battle its intensifying wildfires.

California “is very successful at handling its incidents” with its own platoons of firefighters and specially-equipped fleets of aircraft, said Sean Peterson, manager of the federal government’s National Interagency Coordination Center, which triages the nation’s large fires by deciding where to send reinforcements. “They have more resources, with state and federal cooperators, than the rest of the U.S. combined.”

At the Park Fire, a dusty parking lot at the Silver Dollar Fairground near Chico is crammed with red, yellow and green fire engines and crew trucks emblazoned with the logo of the agency that sent them.

Jeff Whitehouse, an engineer with the Ventura County Fire Department, sat in his fire engine on a recent day, with the air conditioning blasting against the 100-degree-plus temperatures at the Park Fire command post.

He had been on the fire for a week and, after working shifts of 24 hours on and 24 hours off, he said his priorities are sharply focused: “Hydrate, eat and sleep,” Whitehouse said. “On days off, after I get myself squared away, I don’t have trouble sleeping. Then it’s back at it.”

Emiliano Lopez, a firefighter from the Riverside County Fire Department, said he hasn’t had a bad day yet, that he’s managing the heat, takes time to rest and tries to take breaks when he can.

State officials say implementing a shortened 66-hour workweek — down from 72 hours — and a plan to phase in more firefighters over five years will take some of the stress off overworked Cal Fire firefighters. For wildfires, state crews stay as needed, generally working 14 to 21 days before they are rotated out.

“Our focus is on getting the health welfare and rest time,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Acuna. “It used to be that the large incidents were so infrequent that you’d get to go home for a week. We have made a more concerted effort to make those 21-day cycles a reality and allow people more time at home.”

Cal Fire would not allow its firefighters at the Park Fire to be interviewed by CalMatters.

The fire is so vast that the fairground is one of two incident command posts established to better stage the nearly 6,600 personnel on the fire.

According to Chris Hardy, Cal Fire’s deputy chief of command and control, federal fire crews from the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are deployed on California fires.

Hand crews from the California Conservation Corps and the National Guard are working firelines. The state Office of Emergency Services assigned hundreds of engines from local jurisdictions to join the fight.

The shadow of two firefighters against a burning house in front of them as one of them gestures to the left while the Park Fire burns near Chico on July 25, 2024.

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Fred Greaves

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Reuters

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Outside of California, help is coming from all points of the compass. Texas dispatched 25 engines, Utah sent engines and water tenders and Nevada deployed an engine. A fire engine from North Dakota is making its way to the state. A cadre of fire supervisors from Florida, Arkansas and Oregon are working California fires.

And a group from the New York City Fire Department is assisting with a complex of fires in the Sequoia National Forest.

Two waves of Australian firefighters — whose extensive experience and familiarity with California fires is highly prized — are expected to arrive this week. Canada, a reliable partner, is enduring its own fire assault and regrets it cannot help.

“I got calls from governors on the East Coast who were willing to send help,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “That’s a hell of a thing.”

It’s a two-way assistance channel: Despite its already severe fire year — with almost four times more acreage burned so far than the average for this time of year — California already has sent crews to Oregon and Texas, state officials said.

A nationwide Level 5 alert — the highest

Tyler praised California’s mutual aid system for its ability to marshall resources from cooperating agencies quickly. The agreements are pledges that when calls for help come in from another agency within California, fire departments will answer if they can.

The state’s overall fire response is bifurcated, with north and south operations centers set up to more nimbly respond to fires in each region.

With nearly 4,900 fires in California so far this year, and more sparking every day, the system’s limits are being tested.

“We recognize the need to order additional resources,” Tyler said. “We continue to reach out and ask for resources across the U.S.”

Some of those requests are sent to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, where Peterson oversees the daily national fire situation report, making decisions on where to send crews, engines and planes.

With the U.S. now on Preparedness Level 5, the highest, it’s a sobering outlook. It’s only the fourth time in 20 years that the alert level has been reached so early in the summer.

For those requesting assistance, and for those sending it, it’s starting to be everything, everywhere, all at once.

“All of our western geographic areas are ordering resources,” Peterson said. “When I came in at 7 o’clock today, we already had 800 orders sitting here. No large fire is going to get every resource they ask for right now. We are almost fully committed with our resources.”

Cal Fire crews are rewinding hoses at the Park Fire command post in Chico on Aug. 2, 2024

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Florence Middleton

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CalMatters

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Peterson, who was born in Redding and grew up in Paradise, scene of California’s most-deadly fire, is a third-generation firefighter who used to work for Cal Fire before joining the U.S. Forest Service.

As the chessmaster responsible for moving much of the nation’s firefighting pieces, Peterson said the current challenge is “we don’t have people to send. It’s a balancing act, it can be a chess game. It’s a game we have been playing for several decades.”

Newsom said last week that “a lot of mutual aid is being stretched to West-wide fires,” acknowledging that California is not always the top national priority.

“We haven’t skimped on staffing, we have a record number of personnel. When I got here as governor we had 6,700 personnel at Cal Fire. Today, more than 9,700 men and women work at Cal Fire,” Newsom said at a news conference.

Rest "is paramount" for Hotshots, state crews

The Forest Service has adjusted, too. The standard staffing on its Hotshot crews in recent years has expanded to 25. These highly-trained crews are often positioned at the most dangerous parts of fires. With at least 18 members required to deploy, a firefighter who needs to stand down can do so without affecting the functionality of the crew.

The Park Fire, stubborn and dangerous, has grown into a “campaign fire,” an informal designation that acknowledges it’s a blaze likely to be around for some time. The million-acre August Complex fire in 2020 burned in seven Northern California counties for nearly three months.

On a fireline, that translates into days and nights that blur. Sixteen-hour shifts or longer are not uncommon. Already tired crews settle into a rhythm of hours on the fire followed by a handful of hours to shower, eat and, critically, sleep.

“Getting the crew sufficient rest is paramount for me once we are off the fireline,” said Dan Mallia, superintendent for the Redding Hot Shots, an elite Forest Service team that worked the Park Fire.

He said the fire service has a better understanding of the link between sleep and maintaining physical and mental health. To that end, some crews sleep in specially retrofitted trailers at the incident command post, others, such as Cal Fire, stay in local hotels.

But fire camps, which can be loud, bustling places with round-the-clock lights and noise, are not ideal places to rest. Mallia said after decades of fighting fires in remote places in California, “I know all the hidey-holes. It needs to be quiet and it needs to be dark. We find a campsite, put a sleeping pad down and get in our bags. I’ve slept in hundreds of high school gyms.”

Veteran firefighters joke about being able to sleep standing up. Talking this week while waiting for his team to be assigned, Mallia said the crew was in trucks, ready to go. “I guarantee you they are catnapping,” he said.

'Can I pet your dog?'

Fire bosses now understand that rest and time away from the fireline are critical to maintaining the ability of crews to stay at work, and to mentally stay on the job. With firefighters facing months of racing from fire to fire, officials employ anything that can reduce the strain of an already-stressful job.

Ember, a cheerful yellow labrador, is one such tool. Richard Alamo is her handler, and as he strides through the sprawling camp he is greeted with “Can I pet your dog?,” exactly the reaction he’s looking for.

Alamo, a captain with the Sacramento Fire Department, employs Ember and her ever-swishing tail, as a therapy dog to allow firefighters to decompress by petting and playing with the dog, a small moment of normalcy in a frenetic place.

“They’re working long hours. They’re waiting to see some of the devastation,” he said. “And so when you come up they’re all smiles. We’re making a huge impact.

A firefighter embraces Ember, a therapy dog, at the Park Fire command post in Chico on Aug. 2, 2024, after returning from a long shift fighting the Park Fire. Ember and other therapy dogs are available to crew members at the command post to alleviate stress

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Florence Middleton

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CalMatters

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“She has a calming nature and she just loves people,” Alamo said, stroking the dog’s head. “It’s amazing to see her seek out certain people who might be stressed or having some type of emotion, and she’ll provide a little nudge, then position herself right in front of them so that they can pet her. Sometimes there’s no conversation that needs to be had. Just her simply going up to that person and saying, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ “

Those moments of decompression are now part of the state’s overall fire strategy. Tyler has said that attending to the mental health of his employees is a top priority, amid what some state officials have described as a crisis of PTSD and suicide.

The department has a team of peer support counselors who travel to fire stations and set up in trailers on large fires, with an open-door policy for anyone working the fire to talk.

The frequency and intensity of fires now leaves little down time, on a fire or after, because they might be quickly redeployed.

It’s a never-ending chess game.

“It has the potential to be a very long fire season,” Peterson said. “It does give us pause, yes it does.”

The newest Air Force One jet, gifted to President Donald Trump from the Qatari government, arrived ahead of schedule Friday to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

On Friday afternoon, Trump toured the luxury Boeing 747 plane that initially stirred controversy. The plane was one of the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the U.S. government and raised legal and ethical questions after Qatar offered to replace the presidential jet last year. Trump said last May he'd be "stupid" not to accept the offer. Industry groups originally said the plane could be worth approximately $400 million.

Trump also spoke standing in front of the plane, thanking the Emir of Qatar.

The president praised the workmanship of the plane, describing it as the "world's most luxurious plane." He also called it the "largest Air Force One ever built," adding, "It flies further and faster than any Air Force One."

"This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody's ever seen before, probably even almost outside of an airplane," Trump said. "Nobody's ever seen anything like this, and in only 10 months, a timeframe no one thought possible."

The exterior of the jet is no longer light blue, silver and white — a fixture since the Kennedy administration. Trump unveiled the new red, white and blue color scheme.

"It was time for a change. … Everything was designed good. It was my taste," Trump said, saying that he approved the new color scheme, which reflects the American flag.

The VC-25B Bridge aircraft will now undertake its commissioning flights, what the Air Force calls a "final exam" for the plane. The plane was modified after serving the Qatari Head of State.

"Once these flights are successfully completed, the aircraft is officially 'commissioned' into the active executive airlift fleet and becomes available for presidential missions," an Air Force press release said.

The aircraft from Qatar will "serve as a bridge until the [long-term] VC-25B is delivered," according to earlier communications from the Air Force. The plane was delivered well before expectations. The Air Force originally estimated the plane would be delivered in 2028 but said by modifying requirements it could deliver the first aircraft in 2027. The modifications "were carefully crafted to prioritize mission over aesthetics, leaving much of the previous head of state interior layout minimally changed," the Air Force said.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach praised the delivery.

"Many thought it could not be done, but the United States Air Force was able to execute and provide a secure, reliable airborne command post on an accelerated timeline," he said.

Vice President JD Vance has delayed his trip to Switzerland to negotiate the terms of a peace agreement with Iran on Friday.

It's unclear exactly why the talks were called off at the last minute, with hundreds of journalists already waiting in the alpine city of Lucerne.

But the delay raises questions over the sturdiness of the memorandum of understanding to end the war, signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

It came as Israel continued to heavily bombard Lebanon, despite the agreement promising to end all military operations, including in Lebanon.

Lebanese media said at least 18 were killed in overnight strikes, and Israel said four of its soldiers had been killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.

Here are more details about the agreement and challenges they face in this latest effort to end the conflict:

US lifts naval blockade

There was immediate progress after the preliminary agreement to end the three-and-half month conflict that has killed thousands of people across the Middle East, rocked the global economy and pushed millions more into poverty around the world, according to the United Nations.

The United States lifted its naval blockade on Iran.

The short memorandum of understanding also promises to end military operations on all fronts and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway through which much of the world's oil, gas and fertilizer must pass to reach global markets.

The agreement prompted President Trump to celebrate on Truth Social writing: "Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!"

But there are still many potential pitfalls. Even before the agreement was signed, Trump made its fragility clear: "It's a memorandum of understanding," he said at the G7 summit in France. "If I don't like it, if they don't behave, we'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."

The document doesn't solve the underlying reason for why the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. It creates a 60-day window — extendable by mutual agreement — for the two sides to resolve the enmity that goes back many decades.

Israel remains defiant against the deal

The preliminary agreement promises to end all military operations, including in Lebanon. Israel has invaded and taken large swaths of southern Lebanon in an offensive it says is targeting the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah, which has killed more than 3,800 people, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has made clear that Iran considers Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon essential. "Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end," Araghchi said.

Israel wasn't involved in the negotiations with Iran — though Trump said at a press conference this week that he had sent Israel a copy of the document before he signed it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained defiant, saying his troops will remain in southern Lebanon for as long as Israel's security requires it.

The conflict in Lebanon is causing an extraordinarily open rift between Trump and Netanyahu. "He's a very difficult guy," Trump said of the Israeli prime minister recently said to The New York Times.

On Thursday, Israel's military released a new map ⁠showing an expanded area of southern Lebanon occupied by its troops, which it describes as a buffer zone.

"Trump's agreement does not bind us," Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wrote on social media on Monday. "We are not partners to this agreement that does not ensure our security."

Vice President Vance hit back at critics in the Israeli government, warning at a press conference that "Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time."

Trump signed the deal to avoid 'economic catastrophe'

The agreement promises "the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts" — including in Lebanon, where Israel has continued its offensive. Iran and the United States also promise "not to initiate" any further war or operation against each other. Not long after Trump signed the memorandum, U.S. Central Command said Thursday it had ended its naval blockade of ships to and from Iranian ports, as promised in the agreement.

Iranian state media reported the country's national security council will suspend tolls paid by ships for 60 days, per the deal, but that ships must still request Iran's permission — through a newly established Persian Gulf Strait Authority, before passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which was once considered an international waterway.

Increased ship traffic through the strait will come as a relief to Trump, whose approval ratings have been sliding as Americans see soaring gasoline prices and spiking inflation. Last month Trump insisted he doesn't think about Americans' financial situation in his approach to Iran.

But this week he acknowledged at a news conference that he had signed this agreement because he "didn't want to see an economic catastrophe."

The memorandum gives major concessions to Iran

Trump has repeatedly called the Iran nuclear deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — presided over by President Barack Obama in 2015 the "worst deal ever," and Trump abandoned the agreement in his first term in office. But the framework agreement signed this week hands major financial concessions to Iran that could ultimately go much further than the Obama-era arrangement.

The document says the U.S. will work with regional partners to create a fund of "at least $300 billion" for Iran's reconstruction and economic development. Vice President Vance has said Gulf Arab nations would invest that amount.

It also promises that the U.S. will unfreeze Iranian funds and assets that amount potentially to tens of billions of dollars. Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, told CNN Iran wants to see the release of $24 billion.

These commitments do depend on further negotiations. But the Trump administration also plans to issue sanction waivers to allow Iran to immediately sell its oil. The waiver concedes a major point of potential leverage at the start of these 60-day talks.

And the interim deal also opens the door to ending all U.S. and international sanctions on Iran. Iran has been under a plethora of U.S. sanctions since the 1979 Revolution. The penalties have kept Iran cut off from the global economy, preventing it, for example, from accessing the international banking sector. This new pledge goes far beyond the JCPOA deal, which removed some sanctions in exchange for Iran reducing its stockpile of uranium.

The negotiation over Iran's nuclear program

President Trump has boasted he will achieve a much "better" agreement than the JCPOA. The substantive talks on this are yet to begin, but so far, the commitment Iran has made in the memorandum that it "shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons" is the same promise it has made for years, including in the 2015 nuclear accord.

The details of Iran's nuclear program are complex and technical. The JCPOA was negotiated over years by the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China, with nuclear physicists and non-proliferation experts, and ran to 159 pages. Trump's framework was negotiated bilaterally by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — a property developer and the president's son-in-law. An Iranian diplomat who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly told NPR they believed the last round of talks with the Trump administration did not progress because "the Americans at the table did not understand the subject."

The U.S. had been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program before abruptly launching the bombing campaign with Israel on Tehran that began this war on Feb. 28. For this latest round of talks, Witkoff and Kushner visited the national lab in Oak Ridge, Tenn., earlier this month for consultations with a team of technical experts that could play a role in nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Has Iran come out of the war stronger?

Trump began the conflict promising to set conditions for regime change in Iran. "I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand," he told Iranians in a televised address on Feb. 28. "When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take."

It was a nightmare scenario for the Iranian regime, to face down the bombardment from two of the world's most powerful militaries. The war killed more than 3,300 Iranians, according to state media, including top leaders, and pounded the country's infrastructure and armed forces. But the regime's survival, and its ability to target U.S. assets in the region and control the Strait of Hormuz, empowered Iran.

The country has learned "that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works," Bill Cassidy, Republican senator from Louisiana, said in a blistering attack on the Trump administration. He called the offensive against Iran "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades."

Iran's response forced the Trump administration to set aside the goal of regime change to focus on seeking a way to reopen the vital strait.

"The only 'achievement' of the ceasefire is the likely reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — which was open before the war started. And we will apparently pay Iran to do so," Antony Blinken, who was secretary of state under former President Joe Biden, posted on X.

Trump has countered critics by saying on social media that anyone who thinks he hasn't "been tough enough on Iran," when the stock market is high and oil prices are falling, is either jealous, bad or stupid. And Vance called on critics to "have a little bit of faith in the president of the United States."

But in a hard accounting of the war, the facts are undeniable: Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz gave it the leverage to secure from Trump concessions that unlock vast sums of money — even more, potentially, than under Obama.

And regarding Iran's nuclear program, the Iranians so far appear not to have offered Trump any more concessions than they did at the Geneva talks two days before the U.S. and Israel launched their offensive in February.

Now new negotiations are set to begin, and the Iranians will be coming to the table having shown Trump, and the world, the power they can wield over the global economy.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has witnessed more than a century of American history, in all its heartbreak and majesty. Crowds have gathered around it in protest and in praise, to denounce American wars and hear great voices sing and speak.

Today, it's the center of a slimy controversy.

President Donald Trump said in April he found the water in the reflecting pool "filthy" and "disgusting." He authorized a no-bid contract to resurface the basin of the 2,000-foot long pool and paint it "American flag blue" in time for July 4th celebrations.

"I have a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools," the president crowed, before the National Park Service gave out no-bid contracts for sealing and upgrades.

After weeks of renovation, the project has cost taxpayers more than $14 million and … the reflecting pool looks green. And I mean green. Like the Chicago River on St. Patrick's Day. But that river is dyed green for a day. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is green because of algae.

Look, algae happens. It's clouded the reflecting pool since it was first filled in 1923. Algae blooms flourish when sunlight falls on warm, sluggish water — like you'd find in a shallow, still pool absorbing the glare and swelter of a Washington, D.C., summer.

But a University of Virginia satellite analysis commissioned by the Washington Post saw more algae in the Reflecting Pool this month than at any other time in the past five years.

The Interior Department says workers have deployed "a state-of-the-art ozone nanobubbler filtration system" to banish the algae.

"President Donald J. Trump is an expert builder who has fixed the reflecting pool for good," spokesperson Kate Martin said in a statement this week, "unlike the failed and extremely costly attempt by Obama and Biden."

That's a reference to a major project during President Barack Obama's first term to stop the pool from sinking and add a filtration system.

In these deeply divisive and partisan times, it's good to remind ourselves that many issues aren't just Republican red or Democratic blue. The Reflecting Pool algae doesn't care about our party lines. It's green, and it's not going anywhere.

Two smoke relief centers are now open for residents impacted by the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.

The centers in Boyle Heights and East L.A. offer resources such as masks, food, water, temporary shelter, pet assistance and information from public health and air quality officials. They’re open 24 hours a day until further notice.

The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks and Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office opened the Pecan Recreation Center as a smoke relief center Friday. A second center opened Saturday at City Terrace Park through the office of L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis. 

Here’s where they’re located: 

The fire broke out Wednesday, prompting an hours-long shelter-in-place order due to hazardous materials, including ammonia.

On Friday, a wind-driven flare-up at the site of the fire sent plumes of smoke over the city, hours after a second shelter-in-place order was lifted. Residents in the immediate area reported seeing ash on their homes and cars. On Saturday, many across Los Angeles County — from Pasadena to the West Adams neighborhood — also reported smelling smoke and experiencing poor air quality.

Two smoke relief centers are now open for residents impacted by the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.

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Courtesy City Terrace resident

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Jurado and her team were in the residential neighborhood near the fire site Friday, distributing air purifiers and masks. She said community groups, including Proyecto Pastoral, Running Mamis and Centro CSO, also went door to door distributing masks. 

Residents can contact Jurado’s office at Boyle Heights City Hall to request air purifiers and masks or to make donations at (323) 526-9332.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke outside the building Friday evening, praising firefighters’ efforts. She added that people in the area could expect to continue to see smoke, and she urged people and their pets to stay inside as much as possible. She asked people to wear masks when they needed to go outside.

“We know that this is concerning. This is inconvenient, but we are doing everything we can to end this as soon as possible,” she said. “And we want everyone to be safe in the meantime.”

Read more:

• What materials burned in the fire and what to know about air quality
• How to keep yourself safe from the dismal air quality driven by fires

The post Smoke relief shelters open for residents impacted by Boyle Heights warehouse fire appeared first on LA Local.