Faced with hundreds of big, hard-to-control blazes, California is struggling with what could be its most expensive firefighting season ever, burning through $285 million in the last six weeks alone and up to $13 million a day.
With the worst of the fire season still ahead, lawmakers are scrambling to find a way to pay for it all and are considering slapping homeowners with a disaster surcharge that asks those in fire-prone areas to pay the most.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to amend a June disaster declaration and declare the state a disaster area, in part because of firefighting costs. Since mid-May, 2,096 wildfires have burned more than 1.3 million acres and destroyed 306 homes, Schwarzenegger said.
A decade ago, California spent $44 million to fight fires for an entire year. The $285 million already spent this fiscal year, which began July 1, is more than a year’s worth of firefighting bills in nine of the previous 10 years.
During the first days of July, at the height of the battle against thousands of lightning-sparked fires, California blazed through $13 million a day. That’s more than the entire annual firefighting budgets of neighboring Arizona and Nevada.
Twenty-nine states, including California, maintain a fund for responding to natural disasters. But only three — Florida, Indiana and Maine — assess a special surcharge or fee to pay for them.