San Jose, Oakland fire departments understaffed like L.A.

The devastating fires that continue to burn in Los Angeles and rank among California’s deadliest and most destructive in history exposed long-festering complaints that the city fire department’s staffing is well below national averages.

Here in the Bay Area, two of the three largest city fire departments are similarly stretched, raising questions about their ability to protect homes and residents from wind-driven infernos like the Palisades and Eaton fires that continue to burn in and around Los Angeles where they’ve killed 28 people and destroyed more than 15,000 homes and other structures.

Nationally, fire departments staffed mostly or entirely by full-time employees, rather than volunteers, have ranged from 1.54 to 1.81 career firefighters per 1,000 people, and 0.84 to 1.30 in larger departments, according to the latest U.S. fire department profile report in 2022 by the National Fire Protection Association, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that researches fire safety.

The Los Angeles Fire Department has less than one firefighter for every 1,000 residents, with a staffing rate of 0.90, a Bay Area News Group analysis found. The rate at the Oakland Fire Department is 1.07, and the San Jose Fire Department’s is only 0.64.

In Oakland, City Councilman Zac Unger is pushing back on proposals to close fire stations to save money as the city battles a budget crisis.

“We saw that Los Angeles was one of the lowest staffed fire departments in the country, and Oakland is right there with them,” Unger said. “We have desperately low staffing levels in Oakland.”

It’s hard to say how much staffing hampered Los Angeles’ response to the devastating fires that erupted amid a perfect storm of conditions that primed the region to burn — warm, hurricane-force easterly gusts known as Santa Anas fanned flames in tinder-dry hills and grasslands parched by a prolonged dry spell. Such conditions have driven some of the state’s worst fires and humbled even the best firefighting efforts, grounding aircraft and frustrating containment efforts as embers fly.

Poor land management and brush clearing in wildlands beyond a city’s borders can increase vulnerability. Mutual aid from neighboring city, county and state fire departments, normally available to help bolster the response, can be quickly overwhelmed by a rapidly expanding inferno. And investigations are underway amid questions about Los Angeles’ preparations ahead of the windstorm, why a reservoir was left drained for repairs and fire hydrants went dry at higher elevations.

“Preparedness goes much deeper than just fire department staffing levels,” said Susan McKelvey, spokeswoman for the National Fire Protection Association, whose organization doesn’t recommend a firefighters per 1,000 staffing rate. “Many aspects need to be considered, including such things as the propensity of emergency incidents.”

A department staffed for an expected lower level of responses can be quickly overwhelmed by a major fire.

“The dangerous thing here is that certain staffing levels and the number of incidents go well even though the firefighter ratios are less than standard,” McKelvey said. “This can develop a sense that everything is OK up until there is a much more complex or cascading series of events that overtax the resources.”

But experts say staffing is key in mounting an effective defense against a roaring blaze.

“Firefighter staffing is really important,” said Chris Field, a Stanford University environmental science professor whose research includes climate change and wildfire risk. “It’s also a really challenging thing to coordinate. We face really serious wildfire challenges in the Bay Area, and that is reflected in the recent wildfire experience. This is a very fire-prone ecosystem, and we know that risks are increasing as we are encountering gradually hotter and dryer climate.”

Ironically, the major Bay Area city with the best-staffed fire department faces the least risk from wildfires. San Francisco, surrounded by ocean and bay water to the west, north and east, has a firefighter staffing ratio per 1,000 people of 2.09, above the national average cited by the fire protection association.

County fire departments that provide protection in unincorporated rural towns and wildland areas neighboring bigger cities are often the first line of defense against wildfires also are understaffed. The Los Angeles County Fire Department has a firefighter staffing ratio of about 1.16 per 1,000 people. In the Bay Area, county fire department staffing levels per 1,000 people are 1.06 at Santa Clara, 1.36 at Alameda and 0.65 at Contra Costa.

California also has fewer volunteer firefighters, who make up a larger share of personnel in other parts of the country, particularly in county and rural departments, bolstering their resources at lower cost.

Field, the Stanford professor, said increased risks from more people living near wildland areas, and vegetation control and fuel management struggling to keep up, raise the need for more firefighters.

“Many of the most severe risks in the Bay Area, like the risks in L.A., have to do with homes adjacent to wildlands in the wildland-urban interface,” Field said. “It almost certainly is going to be the case that we’re going to need more firefighters in general. But we can also benefit a lot from being able to coordinate responses effectively so that as we see risk accumulating, or once fire actually gets going, we can rapidly bring in groups from around the region to mount the required scale of response.”

In San Jose, which sent firefighters to Los Angeles to help fight the fires, Mayor Matt Mahan has asked for an assessment of the city’s wildfire response preparedness and capabilities, which will include vegetation management, evacuation plans, water availability and hydrant capacity and the roles and responsibilities of partner agencies. The city is building a new fire station. And City Councilman Bien Doan, a retired fire captain, urged increasing firefighter staffing as well.

May, the city firefighter union president, said that couldn’t come soon enough.

“We’re at a breaking point,” May said. “We can’t continue to operate in this capacity.”