California firefighters crowd into base camps every year. Here’s how COVID-19 is changing that

Every summer, county fairgrounds around California turn into wildfire “base camps” crowded with thousands of firefighters preparing for battle or resting up.

This year, firefighters can expect larger, more sprawling camps without food lines and more social distancing and face masks, as the state tries to keep its firefighting workforce safe from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Right now, about 6,900 firefighters are deployed fighting hundreds of lightning-ignited fires. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is seeking to bring in hundreds more from out of state. Each one of them could be carrying the disease and not know it.

To keep them from spreading the virus to their colleagues, the state has made sweeping changes to how it runs the base camps, Cal Fire spokeswoman Lynnette Round said. The most notable changes are the steps camp managers are taking to keep firefighters from congregating.

“The camps are larger because we have to spread people out, and we have to make sure everybody is ... socially distant,” she said.

Cal Fire has more handwashing stations at the camps, and “we’re trying to keep it as sanitized and clean as possible,” she said. She said firefighters are being given ready-to-eat meals instead of typical buffet-style chow lines so that “there’s no passing things around.”

Morning briefings also are being done over the radio as much as possible, instead of the way it worked in previous years, Round said. Huge crowds would typically gather under a pavilion or in a hall to hear the commanders describe overnight fire conditions and hand out duty assignments.

Experts say firefighters, though they’re some of the state’s most physically fit workers, are just as at risk of catching and spreading the virus if they don’t abide by social distancing practices.

Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University, said the biggests risks of anyone catching the coronavirus come from what he calls the “Three C’s”: Confined spaces, crowding and close contact.

“We’re seeing a lot of outbreaks all over the country,” Scott said. “And some of these super-spreader events, for the most part, all come back to that scenario.”