加利福尼亚州萨克拉曼多（美联社） - 随着加利福尼亚进入野火季节，该州正在争先恐后地在冠状病毒爆发中找到足够的消防员雇用600名新的州消防员和支持人员。
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday said the state has enough money to instead add 172 professional firefighters, but he said he will use his emergency authority to beef up seasonal crews as the state enters another hot, dry summer when fires often rage out of control.
Firefighting hand crews that typically include 15-17 inmates or civilian California Conservation Corps members do what Newsom called “the really hard grunt work.” They use hand tools and chainsaws to cut and scrape road-like clearings through trees and brush in hopes of stopping the spread of wildfires.
Newsom说，此类船员的数量“比我们过去的地方大大减少”。在监狱系统的192名授权囚犯中，目前只有94名。
The state shut down 12 of its 43 inmate firefighter camps last month for two-week quarantines after inmates tested positive for the virus at the California Correctional Center in Susanville, where firefighters are trained to deploy across Northern California.
That deepens a growing hole in the state’s firefighting ranks as the state releases thousands of inmates early to create space during the pandemic, officials said.
In response, Newsom announced Thursday he will use $72.4 million to hire 858 additional seasonal firefighters and field six more California Conservation Corps crews through October.
Pre-pandemic, he wanted to spend $200 million this year to hire about 500 professional firefighters and 100 support staff. But the budget Newsom signed last week includes just $85.6 million for the 172 permanent firefighting positions.
Tim Edwards, president of the union representing state firefighters, said even the 600 positions would merely have restored the state’s professional ranks to where they should be. But he called the new permanent and seasonal firefighters “a very good start.”
惩教部发言人达娜·西姆斯（Dana Simas）说，没有一个囚犯消防员都测试了积极的态度，她预计许多营地将在下周初重返值班。
In the meantime, corrections officials say they are training up to 120 inmates a month who would normally be stationed in Southern California but will now be spread statewide.
在大流行之前,已经permane状态ntly lost 45 inmate crews in recent years as the state released the lower-level inmates who typically staff the program.
To address the shortage, corrections officials began allowing inmates with more serious criminal histories to serve as firefighters if they’d behaved recently. But Edwards fears those standards could slip and warned of “a big safety concern.”
State firefighters meanwhile are absorbing a 7.5% pay cut in exchange for extra days off they don’t have time to take because of the understaffing, he said, harming the morale of the nearly 6,000 full-time firefighters.
卡尔菲尔（Calfire）负责人汤姆·波特（Thom Porter）表示，他不希望今年随时随地派遣全部囚犯船员。但是他希望，到秋季野火赛季的高峰期，该州可以拥有约155名机组人员，大约与去年相同。
California is compensating in part by boosting its air power with things such as three modern Black Hawk firefighting helicopters, one of which served as a backdrop for Newsom’s news conference.
他说，这些飞机可以迅速在小火上及其周围的水倾倒并阻燃，以防止它们成长失控。
“我们将实现它，”波特说。“我们有空中舰队要这样做。”
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