[M T]

Here's further confirmation that firefighting crews were impacted by early release of prisoners 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story...est-blazes

Sigh.   An unsubstantiated, third-person, 1-sentence description in a newspaper is not "confirmation".

So, let's look at this "confirmation".  The text reads "California in recent weeks has also hired 830 seasonal firefighters meant to replace prison crews that are not available due to early releases prompted by the pandemic."

830 seasonal firefighters.  Ok, where does that come from.  One news source says "Newsom declared a state of emergency and upped the Cal Fire budget by more than $85 million dollars to hire additional staff."  A different source gives a different source of the money, "This year, the Legislature approved an $85 million funding boost for Cal Fire to hire more full time wildland firefighters and an additional 830 seasonal firefighters." 

Maybe someone knows where the budget documents are, but this IN JANUARY, reported about the budget sent to the legislature, "The state budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed Friday calls for hiring 677 new full-time staff members at Cal Fire, the state’s lead firefighting agency, over the next five years. That’s an increase of 10.7% from the current total of 6,280 full-time employees who work at the agency now. Another 2,385 Cal Fire positions are seasonal employees. ... Of those new full-time hires, 438 would be front-line firefighters, and the other 239 would work in other jobs"

The legislature pushed back on the Governor's budget and [url=https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4172]recommended additional seasonal workers rather than permanent workers.  (I don't have the actual budget, so I don't know what was passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor.)

So, on July 9, the Governor announced the intent to hire of 858 seasonal workers AND 6 California Conservation Crews (CCC) (I believe these are typically 17-man crews).  As already described, CCC is comprised of inmates.   So, despite the nearly release of 16% of the prison population, he was proposing (I don't know that it got done) a larger number of prisoners being firefighters.

I've not seen how many, if any, of the seasonal workers are not available because of the flu.  The latest information (8/20) from California Dept of Corrections & Rehabilitation is that none of the CCC camps is on quarantine nor are there confirmed cases among the crew.  They appear to be well isolated (physically, and in procedure) from the general prison population.  COVID-19 is not directly impacting them.  Nor does it seem that the reduction in prison population has had any impact, since the Governor seemed to ask for more CCC crews.

Since my previous posting, I've seen that the latest round of regular tests (this week) at the Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown (one of the two CCC training centers) found 5 staff where positive. The state shows 6 staff positives have not gone back to work yet (8/21), and that there are 4 inmates who have active cases. This will severly impact the training of additional & replacement CCC crews.  As members of the crews are released, I'm not sure how they can be replaced (perhaps there are prisoners previously trained).

Just because something gets said/written doesn't make it a confirmation.

[M T]

Here's further confirmation that firefighting crews were impacted by early release of prisoners 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story...est-blazes

Sigh.   An unsubstantiated, third-person, 1-sentence description in a newspaper is not "confirmation".

So, let's look at this "confirmation".  The text reads "California in recent weeks has also hired 830 seasonal firefighters meant to replace prison crews that are not available due to early releases prompted by the pandemic."

830 seasonal firefighters.  Ok, where does that come from.  One news source says "Newsom declared a state of emergency and upped the Cal Fire budget by more than $85 million dollars to hire additional staff."  A different source gives a different source of the money, "This year, the Legislature approved an $85 million funding boost for Cal Fire to hire more full time wildland firefighters and an additional 830 seasonal firefighters." 

Maybe someone knows where the budget documents are, but this IN JANUARY, reported about the budget sent to the legislature, "The state budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed Friday calls for hiring 677 new full-time staff members at Cal Fire, the state’s lead firefighting agency, over the next five years. That’s an increase of 10.7% from the current total of 6,280 full-time employees who work at the agency now. Another 2,385 Cal Fire positions are seasonal employees. ... Of those new full-time hires, 438 would be front-line firefighters, and the other 239 would work in other jobs"

The legislature pushed back on the Governor's budget and [url=https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4172]recommended additional seasonal workers rather than permanent workers.  (I don't have the actual budget, so I don't know what was passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor.)

So, on July 9, the Governor announced the intent to hire of 858 seasonal workers AND 6 California Conservation Crews (CCC) (I believe these are typically 17-man crews).  As already described, CCC is comprised of inmates.   So, despite the nearly release of 16% of the prison population, he was proposing (I don't know that it got done) a larger number of prisoners being firefighters.

I've not seen how many, if any, of the seasonal workers are not available because of the flu.  The latest information (8/20) from California Dept of Corrections & Rehabilitation is that none of the CCC camps is on quarantine nor are there confirmed cases among the crew.  They appear to be well isolated (physically, and in procedure) from the general prison population.  COVID-19 is not directly impacting them.  Nor does it seem that the reduction in prison population has had any impact, since the Governor seemed to ask for more CCC crews.

Since my previous posting, I've seen that the latest round of regular tests (this week) at the Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown (one of the two CCC training centers) found 5 staff where positive. The state shows 6 staff positives have not gone back to work yet (8/21), and that there are 4 inmates who have active cases. This will severly impact the training of additional & replacement CCC crews.  As members of the crews are released, I'm not sure how they can be replaced (perhaps there are prisoners previously trained).

Just because something gets said/written doesn't make it a confirmation.