Share the Wealth
The Fire & Rescue Branch of the California's Office of Emergency Services is responsible for coordinating and implementing the state's emergency mutual aid plan.
Chief Kim Zagaris, head of the branch, became involved with the fire service after he left the military in 1977. He worked for the Department of Interior and Bureau of Land Management in Nevada before joining the California governor's office. In 2001, Zagaris was appointed the state's fire and rescue chief.
How do the responsibilities as the head of California's State Fire & Rescue Branch differ from a state fire marshal?
The state fire marshal has responsibilities for buildings, training, and fire and arson investigation. We also have the California Department of Land and Forestry Protection and have responsibilities for state wildland areas and contracting with local governments to provide protection.
In the Office of Emergency Services, besides managing the state fire and rescue mutual aid system, I have a 17-member board that I answer to that is made up of fire chiefs, including Chief P. Michael Freeman, Los Angeles County Fire Department; Chief Bill Bamatre, Los Angeles City Fire Department; Chief Chip Prather, Orange County Fire Authority; Chief Joe Cherry, Sacramento Fire Department; and representatives from California Department Forestry, Bureau of Land Management and labor.
The state of California is broken down into six regions, with fire chiefs appointed to those regional fire and rescue coordinates. It's then broken down into counties with the Tahoe basin in Los Angeles area broken down even further. We have 65 operational areas that we deal with in those regions.
We currently have 110 fire engines that the state OES owns; 12 water tenders, six communication units, water caches. We also manage the eight state search-and-rescue teams. I'm also the executive director the FIRESCOPE [www.firescope.org] program, which developed ICS and the multi-agency coordination system. We do a lot of different things.
How does the state of California handle reimbursement for mutual aid or wildland interface response?
It's broken down to Local Responsibility Areas; local governments have responsibility for the fires. The state of California has responsibility for state wildland areas, which is a very large chunk of it. We have federal agencies from the U.S. Forest Service to the Department of Interior to Department of Defense and other federal entities in our Federal Responsibility Areas.
Fires don't recognize boundaries, so as they moves from cities to counties, the hardest part of this is people's understanding their jurisdictional responsibilities. A lot of people like to gravitate to deep pockets. If you are a small volunteer agency, you'd probably like some big guy to pick up the tab. If you you're a fire district, you'd like to have the county pick it up, and they'd like the state to pick it up, which would like to have a federal agency pick it up. It's like fire protection is a very complicated and expensive business. It's not just wet stuff on the red stuff.
How do you manage working with mutual response within the state?
We have California Fire Assistance Agreement 2002 — 2006 [available at www.oes.ca.gov]. In that Fire Assistance Agreement, we work with six respective agencies. We enter into this agreement for local governments on behalf of us and since I manage the state mutual aid system, I enter into this agreement for local government as well.
We use this agreement, which actually morphed out of an agreement that OES had back in 1960 for OES fire engines. It started out with only three agencies at that time, California Department of Forestry, U.S. Forest Service and OES. Over the years, it grew to the six agencies we have now and it's called the California Assistance Agreement. We anticipate the Bureau of Indian Affairs and possibly the Department of Defense signing on this agreement in 2006.
What prompted expansion of this agreement?
In 1985, we had a series of fires in the state of California that moved local government a lot further than we had [moved] in previous years. Before 1985, most mutual aid in the state of California was from surrounding counties helping one another; that we managed and coordinated for the California fire service. In 1985, we had so many fires in the state that we were moving people hundreds of miles from their jurisdictions to fight fires. At that time our office and the forestry agency agreed we needed to do something rather than the non-reimbursable mutual aid. The forestry said they wanted to do something to pay for the services, so starting with the agreement for the OES fire engines, we agreed to include local government statewide.
In 1987, we had fires statewide that were widening and had the state engaged for the next 30 to 45 days. At that time, we used to take the salaries statewide and by regions, do a salary survey among the six regions and average each region for firefighters, engineers, captains and chief officers. We'd take all six regions, average that out and use that for a reimbursable amount for every body. If you were a small, rural fire department, you made out real good. If you were a large fire agency, you took it in the shorts. As budgets got tighter over the years, people wanted to get more of their actual costs reimbursed, so we took it to the next level.
Several years ago, we took the average actual costs statewide. When we do this agreement, we send out a salary survey and ask for that information. Each fire department averages out 100 captains and maybe five pay scales in there. We ask them to average out what they pay their captains for their department so when they send an engine out the door, if it has a captain, an engineer/operator and two firefighters, we pay that engine company based on their average the hours they're out. We use that as a basis for the reimbursement.
What's the payment process?
When we dispatch folks out to help, we have a standardized form that we use statewide that everyone fills out by either the chief officer or the engine. The reimbursement form (F42) requires basic information — time started and location, equipment used, return info — plus the vehicle identification because we have to reimburse the fire apparatus they are on. We take this information, plug it into our computer program here and generate an invoice. We also allow them to be reimbursed for worker's compensation and indirect costs, so we have an administrative surcharge that's added on the bill for the overhead. The form they fill out and the incident section chief signs off on comes back to OES, we develop the final invoice and send it back to the local jurisdiction, usually 30 to 60 days. When the fire department signs it off, we send it in for payment.
On an average year, we do somewhere between $20 to $25 million that we reimburse to this agreement. In a busy year, such as 2003, we approach $50 million that we reimburse. We also use this agreement for non-traditional emergencies, wildland emergencies. I have the authority to invoke this agreement under state of emergency or federal-declared emergencies as well.
We have the authority to mobilize resources for potential emergencies and I have the authority to do the reimbursement out of this agreement as well.
It's a fairly basic agreement.
The first nine pages of the agreement are the primary boilerplate and we don't touch that until the expiration date. The exhibits attached, we adjust on a yearly basis. That's one of the things that make this agreement to work best and reminds the local government folks that they use this agreement voluntarily and they agree to go by this agreement. It means they can't come back and say they don't like some part of the agreement. It also stipulates they have to provide safety clothing, meet CAL-OSHA requirements, training standards, etc.
Currently, one of the more interesting things with the agreement is that some of our forces have local agreements with local agencies and that creates some problems for the system. The 2003 fire siege showed that we really had to get down to this agreement and use it as our only mass agreement statewide. We're currently in the process of doing that. We just had our first meeting of this year and want to have one state agreement for all our agencies.
People probably think: “Wow, those people out in California on the cutting edge of doing business.” The more we standardize how we do business, day in and day out, [the easier it is] for everybody. The Forest Service alone has 300-plus agreements. Do you know how much time the Forest Service and the local agencies spend with other agencies? So what we're doing is cutting down on the agreements and staff hours to one agreement, however, that's going to mean my staff will have a significant workload for reimbursement that I would be willing to venture double or triple reimbursement out of this office.
I understand California sent teams to Louisiana. How do you go about getting reimbursed for those?
Currently, the first wave of people we sent out were through the Urban Search & Rescue program. The first request was not for our traditional resources. FEMA needed swiftwater resources out the door. We're lucky enough that OES during the 1995 flood season spent half a million dollars and came up 10 swiftwater caches, which just happened to be assigned to Urban Search & Rescue — swiftwater is not part of the national USAR program.
We spoke with FEMA and our MOAS with FEMA allowed that we would get reimbursed for the personnel and they agreed since our equipment is standardized on all of our caches, FEMA agreed that if anything were lost or damaged or needed repair they would take care of that. So just after the hurricane struck, we all agreed to send our swift water teams. Our eight swiftwater caches were airlifted by the U.S. Military on a task team from FEMA, dispatched to New Orleans for over two weeks. The day after we launched the swiftwater teams, we also received a request for our eight search-and-rescue teams; they also are under the FEMA agreement. FEMA handles the reimbursement for those teams.
California was not part of EMAC, the Emergency Managers Assistance Compact, so we signed an agreement between Louisiana and California — an interstate compact different than the EMAC process. We did a quick agreement and committed one local incident management team out of Los Angeles County and committed one CDF incident team to assist the state of Louisiana emergency operations center in Baton Rouge. We utilized that agreement around the middle of September. Through emergency legislation, we became a signatory to that EMAC agreement and brought us into EMAC as well.
We also received a request for a Type-3 Incident Management Team to Mississippi to assist them as well. Those Incident Management Teams will be reimbursed through my office and the template of our agreement for the reimbursement.
On top of this statewide agreement, the agreement is mirrored similarly with the state of Nevada, the Department Of Forestry, Bureau of Land Management and a separate agreement on top of this with the U.S. Forest Service for interstate assistance that we utilize regularly as well with Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming and all over the west using our agreements with forest agencies.
For wildland fires, what are your priorities?
When we send fire engines for wildland fires, we go under two premises: if another state is looking for wildland resources we try to send our Department of Wildland Forestry equipment out the door as that's their primary mission. We try not to send local government wildland engines out the door because if the CDF can't send theirs, we need to look carefully at local government. If other states need structure protection engines, we generally send the state OES engines and the reason we do that is that I have 110 and it's a state asset. If we're going to damage or destroy anything , it's always easier to do that with state apparatus. If we go past that 110 engines, it better be something pretty significant because local government is like local militia — we like to keep them close to the state and not too far [away] for too long.
During the 2000 fire season we had six of our OES engine strike teams in Colorado, Idaho and Montana. The Department of Forestry had six of their strike teams out the door and an incident management team. When we talk about mutual aid, it's always better to give rather than receive. We generally give mutual aid, but don't receive it. During the 2003 fire siege, we requested mutual aid through out interstate agreements with Nevada, Oregon and Arizona and we received 120 engines at that time. We reimbursed these states the same way we do with our states — by surveys.
During the 2003 fire siege, we moved 1160 local government fire engines within the state of California and that didn't include 102 of our OES engines, water tenders and the DOF engines. It's a pretty good program.
I receive a lot of requests from out of state chiefs asking for a copy of our agreement and how we do it. And a lot of folks just want to become a part of California and want us to handle it for them.
I think California could show FEMA a thing or two.
California is a very disaster-prone state and one of the areas that has more vulnerable wildland areas anywhere in the world with our Mediterranean climate. The state's 158,000 square miles, a population of 37 million people, almost 300 feet below sea level at some points and almost 15,000 at the highest end. We're very diversified and demographically different in a lot of areas, but we developed the ICS that's being used as a national incident command system. We did it because if you kill enough people and have enough property destruction, both the public and the legislators demand better efficiency and effectiveness in how we do business. As disaster prone as we are, every managed operation, there's lesson to be learned, tweaked and adjusted and we're constantly on that mode.
OES is unique from some states, as an emergency management agency, we are part of the governor's office and I mean literally. We're not a department or agency and that's why it says “Governor's Office of Emergency Services.” My director is an appointed position and sits at a cabinet level with the governor and the secretary-level cabinet folks, much like James Lee Witt during the Clinton Administration.
California is traditionally known for being fairly independent and out-there. It's quite an extensive program to run.
Fire & Rescue isn't exclusively that large, but we do a pretty good job of what we do. Our advisory committee has been around since the 1940s and our full time staff here started in 1950. We've developed over time. We also have a law enforcement component across the hall. We're similar to FEMA, but we operate much different than they do.
I have a lot of authority in my position. I don't seek permission to assist other states. I have full authority to act and do business. On the national USAR, when they get a request somebody in the FEMA office has to go and get an activation request to do it. We move hundred of thousands of dollars using stuff we developed out of FIRESCOPE days on an order and request system. So, when somebody has an incident, we have a series of numbers assigned to the response and that number produces a purchase order. Everything we do will be identified by that assigned [response] number and how it's going to get paid. So we have a tracking process down the road and utilized by national and state forestry throughout the country.
I have the authority to task the Department of Forestry if they need assistance with our C130s or California National Guard. We have the authority to make that happen. We don't have to go through a lot of bureaucratic red tape.
In 2002, our Department of Forestry moved their dispatch into our new building. Our folks talk in the same dispatch center together. When the phone rings in that dispatch office, we expect our employees to be state agency employees first, agency employees second, but their first goal is to provide service to the citizens of the state of California and to the local state agencies. It's a one-stop shop, utilizing incident command and single-order point.
With what's going on in the aftermath of Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security should look at what's working in California for a national response model.
We're very fortunate that the folks that came before me really established most of what we have today. I believe I'm the fifth fire chief since 1950 and one of those fire chiefs was in this slot 18 years. A lot of what we've done, we have to do to maintain credibility with the public.
On a national level, we also have to be careful. We're a hand-in-glove relationship and as tight as all of our budgets are, if we don't have local government assisting our forestry or federal agencies with wildland fires or vice versa, it creates holes and then dominoes start falling over quickly.
Our notification system sees a big picture quickly and working with locals is like running a chess board every day. It's high tech, but still struggling with budget deficits. Fire protection is not a cheap business and we run it as a business as best we can, but I'm sure you don't want me to go get three bids while you or your family are dying. We try to make sense at all times.
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