Volunteers at one time played role in fighting wildfires

Larry Woodfill remembers when fighting the north state's fires was just about everybody's job.

Woodfill's dad first put him on a fire line when he was 13, telling the other men his boy was 16. Back then, Woodfill recalls, fire agencies would take all the volunteers they could get.

"In those days they would stop cars on the highway and pull people off and have them fight fire," said Woodfill, 72, who lives on South Fork Mountain with a view of Redding. "It worked well."

Fire officials say when wildfires are raging they often hear from people hoping to help out as they did in the old days. But unless people are working on their own property and there hasn't been a call for evacuation, the fight is left to trained firefighters.

What is now the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection started as the state's Board of Forestry in 1885. As it evolved into a firefighting agency, it relied on volunteer efforts like those Woodfill remembers. In the early 1900s, the agency had only one ranger for each county or two, said Andy McMurry, Cal Fire's assistant deputy director for fire protection. The ranger would round up able bodied laborers to fight fires when they erupted.

"Basically that was their job," he said.

For decades fighting fire where homes and wildland meet was a neighborhood effort, he said.

In the early 1970s Cal Fire started adding more professional firefighters to its ranks, lessening the use of volunteers, McMurry said. In the 1980s legislative tightening of worker safety and liability laws lessened their use even more. Eventually, they were eliminated.

"It's just kind of a change in our culture," he said.

There still are numerous volunteer fire departments that help Cal Fire throughout the north state, but McMurry said today's volunteers go through months of training before fighting a fire.

While grateful to the firefighters who helped protect his home last summer, Woodfill said the focus of the fire fight seems to have changed. In the days of drafting almost anyone, he said, the aim was to put out the flames, and quickly.

Woodfill, who evacuated from his home last July, forced out by the Motion Fire, said he thinks the fire could have been stopped when it was smaller.

The Motion fire was sparked during an unusual storm on June 20 and 21 that brought about 8,000 lightning strikes to Northern California. What would become a raging wildfire started with a cluster of smoldering small fires.

Because fire crews were stretched thin around the north state, they focused their efforts first on fires threatening homes and other property, so more remote fires were left to burn.

"It was in those first two or three days that the battle was lost," Woodfill said.

He said he thinks fire agencies should return to recruiting volunteers as fires burn. The crews could be as small as two people in a pickup with shovels.

"If you have a fire, put it out," he said.

Doing so isn't as simple as it sounds, McMurry said. Now any volunteer recruited by Cal Fire would become an employee of the state and need to undergo the months of training to be a certified firefighter.

"Because of that it's not easy to get someone off the street, give them a shovel and tell them to go dig a fire line," he said.

By Dylan Darling (Contact)
Redding Record-Searchlight