Gov. Gavin Newsom outlined his proposal Monday to spend $2 billion on wildfire and emergency preparedness with the expectation of worsening climate change.
The funding, included in Newsom’s revised budget proposal, would include nearly $50 million to add 12 helicopters and seven air tankers to Cal Fire’s air fleet, $143.3 million to hire 30 more firefighting crews and $708 million to maintain and improve forest and landscape health.
The $2 billion would be the most the state has ever dedicated in its budget to wildfire preparedness, according to Newsom.
“None of us are naive about the challenges that this state faces; for that matter, the entire western United States,” Newsom said Monday during a briefing at McClellan Air Force Base outside of Sacramento.
State legislators already approved $536 million of that proposed $2 billion last month as an early action funding package for wildfire prevention and preparedness as the state plods into worsening drought conditions and sweltering summer months that could lead to large and deadly fires.
The state has already seen 1,000 more fires this year than at this time last year, which Newsom and Cal Fire Director Thom Porter noted was a record-breaking year itself in terms of the number of recorded fires.
“We are resilient, we have remarkable grit and capacity,” Newsom said of the state’s efforts to limit wildfire growth and damage. “And now with historic investments, we’ll have more resources as well than at any time in California’s recent history.”
So is he trying to protect us from wildfires or is he trying to buy votes to fight the recall?
I get this argument in the context of the state stimulus payments, but for wildfire prevention funds?
If wildfire prevention (a direct public safety issue) is your bar for “buy[ing] votes” you are essentially saying that any and all actions a recalled politician takes before the recall election are wholly for their own benefit. Would you have the state not try to prevent wildfires from threatening homes and towns?
Please try to look past your cynicism in cases where peoples’ livelihoods may be at stake. Not *everything* has to be seen through the hyper-political lens you are using.
It’s almost summer!
Shouldn’t this have been done months ago?
Why did he wait until……..
Oh yeah….. now I see.
This will surely help him win his recall. The feeble-minded people who don’t remember anything will ensure this. Poor land management is the problem. Enviro-whackos too. There’s a balance to be struck and he’ll never find it…
Sure Nope.
Obviously you bought the argument that there should be more land management in CA (ii.e. old growth forest harvesting). It’s a very creative use of the drought crisis by the lumber lobby, but trust me no lumber company wants to mange the vast brush lands that contribute a lot of fuel for wildfires.
Sorry JWB.
I’m not trusting you, because you’re wrong. Prior to the pandering of groups like Earth First and the Sierra Club in the 1990’s we had proper forest management. And, you did not see wildfires anywhere near how they are today.
I was going to college in Arcata working toward my environmental science degree when all this was going on. At that time, we were all saying what a disaster this was going to be down the line. Now we’re down the line. This was not only foreseeable, but predicted. Notice how we don’t hear much from these groups nowadays?
Also, there is more to land management than “old growth timber harvesting.” The lumber companies would be responsible for clearing there areas, but other agencies would be handling non timber company land.
“And now with historic investments, we’ll have more resources as well than at any time in California’s recent history.”
Good grief, break out the hip waders, male bovine excrement is at historic proportions ! Spending millions and millions to fight fires rather than spending it to expeditiously remove dead trees.
CA does have consistency, of law suits, of red tape, of unnecessary levels of bureaucracy, levels of tolerated sloth and incompetence guaranteeing
CA will be on fire again this summer.
Beginning of April 2021 roughly 90,000 hazardous trees still needed to be removed just from area of 2018 CAMP / Paradise Fire.
“California’s 2020 wildfire season thwarted the state’s fight against climate change, spewing enough carbon dioxide into the air to equal the emissions of millions of passenger vehicles driving over the course of a year.
Those roughly 9,600 fires burned nearly 4.2 million acres, killed 31 people, and emitted an estimated 112 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to a California Air Resources Board report released Dec. 31. The number is akin to the greenhouse gas emissions of 24.2 million passenger cars driving in a single year”
bloomberg https://tinyurl.com/46hyarr4
Imagine how much better CA could be if competency were a requirement to retain public office or a civil service job. Maybe then half a Bay Bridge, wouldn’t have been $5 Billion over budget and TEN YEARS LATE.
State still hasn’t cleared out enough dead trees resulting in fuel load that’s still too high because of poor, fed and state, forestry management practices over past decade and a half. An don’t forget all the “environmentalist lawsuits” along with endless bureaucracy and red tape required to remove the dead fuel load.
What good is being green and “responsible” if smoke from all the fires ups pollution levels to record highs that you have to stay inside.
Is estimated there are, going into 2021 fire season 147 million dead trees just in Sierra Nevada mountains. Lumber prices are at historically high levels.
CA and FEDs need to get out of the way and streamline tree harvesting process. CA needs to prioritize putting loggers and saw mills back to work.
An what does responsible forestry and wild land management look like free of
DEM governmental restrains. https://tinyurl.com/mhajxp7b
What CA needs is Competent Responsible Leadership that can get 147 million dead tress removed quickly, as in National Guard if necessary.
Competency would, cut down on the 90 minutes to pass a mirror, legend in their own mind, drama queen, slicked back peacock struttin’ press conferences we’re forced to endure.
Voters need to wake up and send a clear message, shallow thinking knee jerk incompetency will no longer be tolerated.
Dealing with all this:
!. Build two more dams to take more water and along with that build some coastal desalinization plants to take water from the ocean and send it inland instead of the other way around.
2. Use some common sense about clearing underbrush and areas subject to fires. Have a statewide plan to prevent the causes of wildfires – dead brush, forests, etc,
3. Forget the stupid green focus and get back to what we do have……nuclear power, anyone? Oh no, we can’t have that we will all die in a nuclear plant explosion. We need to help people get their heads out of their a—-. Nuclear energy is clean and we have better technology today than we did twenty or even ten years ago.
Finally ” worsening climate change” ? What idiot came up with that line? That is supposed to scare the same dim bulbs who are frightened by nuclear energy.
+1 …. but… if he truly spends it on fire prevention and putting out fires – ok … but we’ll all still know it’s mainly for adding defense to the recall
“We are resilient, we have remarkable grit and capacity,”
yes the people do
dem politicians of this state are corrupt union toads
slapping the people whenever the union says so
by the way who was at that frenchlaundry when the newscum was partying while we had to shelter from the china virus …ironically the newscum or pelosi or any other dem politician is interested in finding out where the virus came from at all or to even have china pay for anything related to the virus
we the tax payers are on the hook for all the free money doled out
as well as the vaccine and all of the binbiden trillions going to unions
this is on top of the newscum scam train that has yet 10 years later to place a piece of track
just like the bay bridge the state being ignorant and bad managers
let calscams run the project and inspect the project and better yet gave them the key to the vault to pay for what ever they wanted
and bot have they the bridge went over by 5 billion
the bond for the scam train is a 30 year bond for 30 billion
bet that balloons into 300 billion after cal scams pays for overtime and bonuses and new boats
again how has any dem politician ever helped a dem voter ???
can any dem answer that
or do you just like their silky smooth salesman speeches
that make you give your kids to them
Oh isn’t Newsom just wonderful? He cares so much about us all. NOT!
He’s just in the battle for his life because he knows that if he loses California this time his chances of becoming the president are gone forever! And that is truly his only goal.
And where’s our $600 stimulus check governor? Said last month it would be coming in a few weeks.
Does this man ever get tired of saving the world??!!! He’s a real life super-hero.
For all you righties out there (Sam, OG, Random, Jelly), he’s not buying rakes either. This is an actual plan!
A little too little too late.
he’s doing both and it is disgusting like any Democrat
Keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Vote Democrat, they’re for the peeples.
I looked up this “grit” thing. According to definitions, grit is perseverance, but it is perseverance whether it results in successes or the result is a stupendously long string of catastrophic failures. So, Gavin does have grit.
Just like giving money to families, he is just trying to save his hide.
Gavin is the type of guy that would easily spend other people’s money for a photo op and some positive media while camping in the woods and leaving his campfire smoldering as he drives his gas guzzling SUV out of the mountains.
#RecallGavinNewsom
no more apologizes for breaking his own rules
Newsom is adept at spending California taxpayers money to the tune of two hundred and sixty eight billion dollars this year. Why not throw another two billion cash this late in the fire season to protect his political aspirations. Lets hope the people who still want to vote for him during the recall will realize, there will be no money left for anyone or anything in our State. He is obviously cashing in all of his chips or correctly put….OURS…..
And yet some people are ok with wasting $400 million of the taxpayers’ money on a recall election that doesn’t have a chance. Talk about frivolous spending.
Anyone ever thought of making some non-violent prisoners work as firefighters; building job skills, self-esteem; and saving some money by paying them less and creating more room in prisons for violent offenders yet still having criminals be accountable for their actions and helping out society and hopefully keeping them from recidivating again.
Uhh, California has used prisoner firefighters for years.
Yes, that’s exactly what’s been going on for years. At least until Newsom released them all from prison.
As of May 2021, there are approximately 1,600 inmates working at fire camps. Approximately 900 of those are fire line-qualified inmates.
This is in practice:
https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/conservation-camps/
Does anyone in Concord remember when the Newhall Park surrounding area was roto-tillied and fire break lines installed around the park? This happened annually but doesn’t seem to happen anymore. Why did it go away.
Perhaps we have a statewide problem of not preparing for fires.
Gavin is correct in funneling tons of money toward this problem.
So, when President Trump came to California during the fires last year and said the state needs to take practical steps to combat fires and all Newsom could offer was the old global warming tripe and that the state needed more money to fight global warming, in the end, Newsom went with the practical solution.
LOL! President Trump was vindicated yet again (as always.)
Guess we have to put another dollar in the “Trump was right” jar.
Libbies made such fun when he suggested raking the forest. Then, they learned what raking the forest meant, and now, they’ll get to pay for it.
I would suggest allowing logging companies to thin our forests BEFORE they burn, but so-called “environmentalists” would rather burn down forests and blame global warming than actually fix the problem.
Human mismanagement of our wilderness, combined with allowing development in areas facing extreme fire danger has created this problem. Only long-term adult supervision will fix it.
Well, I live 1/4 mile from the Plumas National Forest and I can tell you that there is logging going on, lots of it really. This year they are concentrating on clearing the dead trees from last year’s fire (North Complex) but in general, there is plenty of logging going on. The real problem is that our California pines are, for the most part, unsuitable for building materials. More useful for paper, which is kind of a dying industry. And the forest floor, at least in our area, is nicely cleared of underbrush and dead trees. I cannot speak for other National Forests but the logging argument won’t hold up in Plumas.
They don’t need more men they need bigger aircraft. They need to be able to spot fires before they grow. It is easier to put out a small fire than one that has gotten out of control.
Why do Liberals vote for Newsome? He is a Slimeball, unethical, and so obviously gunning for POTUS, that voting for him is only encouraging him. If y’all would stop electing LIARS, we might actually have decent education, paved roads, resolved homeless/mental health problems and an end to the seesaw of our states’ financial status. Y’all know it isn’t “normal” for states to fund prisoners’ sex surgeries over paving roads, right? God help us. Moving out of here in T-minus 4 years…..
So in review you do not care for:
Unethical people
People ambitious to become President
Liars
People who do not do enough to improve educations
People who do not do enough to infrastructure
People who do not do enough to protect citizens’ health
So my question is, how is it that you manage to square all of the above with approval for Donald Trump who is an unethical liar who salivated for the presidency and then when he got into office (with both houses of congress controlled by his party) he did nothing to improve schools or infrastructure and then undermined any attempts to limit the spread of COVID-19. From the qualities you listed above he would seem to be your worst nightmare.
@Chuq,
I can only conclude from your reply is that you are “one of those Liberal voters”. I noticed you completely avoided answering my questions. It’s typical of Liberals to try to deflect the question away from the audience, in hope that they wouldn’t notice the stupidity of Liberal Voters. Aren’t you embarrassed by your choices?
I’m not sure why it’s relevant, but I didn’t vote for Trump. Yes, he also did some stupid stuff, but he didn’t run CA, Newsome does. Yup, Newsome, the same guy who thought it was cool to dine at the French Laundry with his wife, and no ody wore a mask. He also unilateral repealed the death penalty, taking away the judicial system’s decision for justice for many California famous, including Lacy Peterson and her baby boy (oh but that didn’t matter because that baby boy was “wanted”). Do t forget the campaign “My Body , My Choice” bit so many of us who didn’t want to get vaxxed, HAD to get vaxxed so we could “Open Caliy” (even though so many states have been open for months now, without requiring A Free People to get vaxxed against their will.
Do you see the double standard? Do you care?
So, Chuq I believe you did not answer the question. The question is why would someone vote for Newsom? National politicians like Trump have nothing to do with the upcoming recall in California. Do you like the illegals, the bullet train, how he is dealing with the homeless, the tunnels project, his wild fire initiatives, his tax policies, or what issues make you support him.
Lindsey Cobia thinks Gavin is just peachy.
Gavin believes releasing 76 thousand dangerous criminals from prison early is the only way to get a handle on systemic racism and climate change. Really, he has no interest in the San Quentin real estate…….
Newsom makes Trump look like Mother Theresa………
Over the past 25-30 years misguided and/or plain dumb environmentalists/politicians have prevented proper forest management. So NOW, since we’re MANY MILLIONS of acres in the hole as to what needs to be cleared, the ONLY way to now achieve economies of scale is through prescribed burns aka controlled burns…and that’s not just the govt/professionals doing it, it’s getting more private landowners trained as certified burners.
It’s about time CA. And your Governor wants to be the example for our country? No thanks.
A majority of U.S. Governors know he’s a doofus. We have to hope that more Californians have figured it out by recall time.