(The Center Square) — Southern California is gearing up for its current heat wave, with Gov. Gavin Newsom pre-deploying additional firefighting resources to Inyo County on Thursday.
The pre-deployment of resources to the county, which is part of the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range, is part of California’s Phase 2 plan.
The plan started Wednesday in response to the National Weather Service‘s Red Flag warnings for several counties in Southern California, according to a press release from Newsom’s office.
Red Flag warnings mean fire weather conditions are happening or expected to happen within the next 24 hours.
The National Weather Service is forecasting 100-degree weather in several Southern California counties, with dry and windy conditions to hit several areas as well.
California’s Phase 2 plan aims to ramp up state and local coordination of resources to prepare for the extreme fire weather lasting through Sunday.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services approved the pre-deployment of resources, already pre-deploying resources to six other counties earlier this week. Those counties are Los Angeles, San Diego, Kern, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino.
A total of 52 fire engines, 10 water tenders, nine bulldozers, five helicopters, 10 hand crews, 14 dispatchers and two Incident Management Teams have been pre-deployed across the seven counties, which now include Inyo.
The pre-deployment of resources is a part of California’s wildfire response strategy and is designed to ensure quick responses to new fires and minimize the destruction from new wildfires.
David Acuna, battalion chief and public information officer at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told The Center Square Thursday it is important to stop wildfires early when the weather is hot because if the fires get larger, conditions make it harder to stop the fire.
Hot, dry and windy conditions are forecast for the rest of the week in Southern California. Such conditions “increase the risk of wildfires because it causes vegetation to dry out and become more receptive to fire spread,” Chris Dargan, crisis communication and public affairs officer at the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, told The Center Square Thursday. “And windy conditions fan flames and can cause embers to travel ahead of the fire causing spot fires in new locations.”
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The pre-deployment of resources comes when local fire agencies think they might need additional resources to help combat conditions in their communities and submit a request to the state.
Dargan said local officials decide the assignments and staging locations of the resources.