California is stepping up by deploying more than 2,800 personnel and equipment to fight wildfires in the state 

Get prepared, stay ready

Residents are urged to stay vigilant during this heightened heat and fire weather period. Californians are reminded to:

California’s comprehensive wildfire strategy

Governor Newsom is committed to tackling the wildfire crisis from every angle – prevention, response, and recovery. Since 2021, the state has invested billions of dollars in wildfire prevention and forest resilience, expanding cutting-edge technologies that help firefighters respond faster and more safely, and forged unprecedented partnerships with federal, tribal, and local governments, as well as private and non-profit landowners.

Streamlined approval of forest management projects has allowed the State to address emergency conditions expeditiously. By using a transparent, time‑limited framework with clear environmental sideboards, the Newsom Administration is:

• Reducing near‑term wildfire danger in high‑risk communities.

• Protecting lives, homes, and critical infrastructure.

• Improving forest health and watershed resilience in the face of a hotter, drier climate.

• Creating a bridge to a durable, long‑term regulatory framework for forest health and fuels reduction that will outlast any single emergency order.

California’s unprecedented wildfire readiness 

As part of the state’s ongoing investment in wildfire resilience and emergency response, CAL FIRE has significantly expanded its workforce over the past five years by adding an average of 1,800 full-time and 600 seasonal positions annually – nearly double that of the previous administration. Over the next four years and beyond, CAL FIRE will be hiring thousands of additional firefighters, natural resource professionals, and support personnel to meet the state’s growing demands.

Governor Newsom has invested millions of dollars to protect communities from wildfire – with $135 million available for new and ongoing prevention projects and $72 million going out the door to projects across the state. This is part of over $5 billion the Newsom administration, in collaboration with the legislature, has invested in wildfire and forest resilience since 2019.

This builds on consecutive years of intensive and focused work by California to confront the severe ongoing risk of catastrophic wildfires. New, bold moves to streamline state-level regulatory processes builds long-term efforts already underway in California to increase wildfire response and forest management in the face of a hotter, drier climate.

The state’s efforts are in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s dangerous cuts to the U.S. Forest Service, which also threatens the safety of communities across the state. The U.S. Forest Service has lost 10% of all positions and 25% of positions outside of direct wildfire response – both of which are likely to impact wildfire response this year. In recent weeks, the Trump administration proposed a massive reorganization that would shutter the Pacific Regional Forest Service office and other regional Forest Service offices across the West, compounding staff cuts and voluntary resignations across the agency.

As the conditions that fueled 2020 become more common, CAL FIRE urges residents to prepare: make an evacuation plan, pack a go bag, and sign up for local emergency alerts.

To learn more about preparedness, visit ReadyforWildfire.org.

Scaling up response capacity: More firefighters, equipment, and advanced technology

California has dramatically expanded its firefighting capacity and deployed cutting-edge technology, adding new equipment to Los Angeles, thousands of firefighters, and billions in funding, the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet, and first-of-their-kind mapping and monitoring systems.

• New strike team strengthens Los Angeles response: Cal OES assigned five new Type-6 fire engines to the Los Angeles City Fire Department, forming a strike team that can respond quickly in both urban and wildland areas. Type-6 engines are the smallest, most maneuverable units in the state fleet—typically four-wheel drive, carrying 300 gallons of water, and designed to reach steep, narrow, or remote locations. The engines are state-owned and prepositioned with the Los Angeles Fire Department through California’s Fire and Rescue Mutual Aid System. This means they can respond immediately to local incidents and deploy to other regions when mutual aid is requested. Cal OES manages a fleet of more than 270 state-owned fire engines assigned to over 60 local agencies statewide, ensuring every community can access coordinated emergency resources when disasters strike. Since 2019, Governor Newsom and the Legislature have invested in expanding and replacing these mutual aid engines to sustain all-hazards readiness across California.
• Doubled fire protection capacity: The Governor has nearly doubled CAL FIRE’s fire protection budget from $2 to $3.8 billion since 2019, increasing fire protection staff from 5,829 to 10,741 positions, while committing to 2,400 more positions over the next several years. California continues to shatter training records, graduating over 650 CAL FIRE officers in 2025 alone — ensuring boots on the ground and resources in place to meet the growing threat of wildfires. The Governor increased the budget of the Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) from $1.8 billion to $3.1 billion and staffing from 1,139 to 1,879 positions since 2019.
• Expanding to the world’s largest aerial firefighting fleet: Just eight months after the addition of the state’s second C-130 Hercules airtanker, the state just bolstered its fleet with a third C-130H — strengthening California’s ability to protect communities from catastrophic wildfire and adding to the largest aerial firefighting fleet in the world. These large-capacity, highly specialized aircraft deliver significant volumes of fire retardant in a single mission, enhancing CAL FIRE’s ability to protect communities and natural resources. These new C-130Hs will be strategically located at CAL FIRE bases throughout the state to mobilize when needed, adding to the helicopters, other aircraft, and firefighters ready to protect Californians. This follows California’s leadership in utilizing innovation and technology to fight fires smarter, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), satellites, and more for wildfire detection, projection, and suppression.
• California unveils first-ever statewide LiDAR maps: The California Natural Resources Agency, in partnership with California Air Resources Board, NASA Ames Research Center, and the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, released California’s first statewide LiDAR datasets on forest and vegetation conditions. The state has processed more than 100 million acres of LiDAR data to map terrain and vegetation and help identify where wildfire fuels have accumulated across California, including 40 million acres collected using $30 million invested by the State Legislature. For the first time, California now has a single, wall-to-wall, high-resolution view of forest and vegetation conditions statewide, providing consistent and reliable data to inform wildfire prevention, forest health, and climate resilience efforts. Agencies, tribes, researchers, land managers, and community members can immediately access the data and integrate it into planning, modeling, and on-the-ground decision-making.
• World’s first redwood forest observatory: California installed the first redwood forest observatory—two research towers in Jackson Demonstration State Forest that measure the inflow and outflow of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy between redwoods and their environment. The flux towers provide a real-time understanding of how redwoods respond to changing environmental conditions, wildfire, and management. Within the next year, aggregated measurements will be processed for public use.