Hot issue: as wildfires spread, so do private firefighting firms

Sep. 1--When fire threatened Escondido's Kit Carson Park last month, help quickly arrived: nine Escondido Fire Department engines, a Cal Fire crew and a helicopter owned by a private firm.

Owned by Georgia's Helicopter Express, the chopper is part of a growing trend: private firefighters. While some work on government contracts, others serve corporations, utilities and insurance companies rather than the general public.

This is a welcome development, said David Torgerson, founder and CEO of Wildfire Defense Services. Since 2008, the Montana company has worked in 20 states, dispatching engines, bulldozers and hand crews to about 600 blazes, including the December 2017 Lilac Fire in Bonsall. Their mission: saving the property and lives of insurance policyholders.

"During a wildfire you can never have enough resources, there's always something more you can do," Torgerson said. "These insurance resources, they work to make a difference."

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Torgerson cited another benefit: while trained to meet federal standards, these firefighters operate at no cost to taxpayers.

Yet the private firefighter's goals aren't always in sync with their government-funded colleagues. While Torgerson said his crews always coordinate with the appropriate authorities before venturing into a live fire scene, wildfires are notoriously fast-moving and unpredictable.

"There is a risk there," said Capt. Thomas Shoots, a spokesman for Cal Fire. "They're still civilians and if something would happen, it could draw resources away if we had to try to get them out of a bad situation."

Some anticipate other problems, if the privatization of this essential service goes further.

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"Any time you have critical public infrastructure that is privatized," said Capt. Jesse Conner, president of San Diego City Firefighters, Local 145, "we all know the motive is profit. I hate seeing companies trying to squeeze profit out of anything that is a critical part of public safety."

Supporters of private services say the main motivation is prevention, not profit. Companies work with insurance firms to inspect homeowners' properties, recommending steps to prevent the loss of their structures in a conflagration.

"It's better for everybody if they can prevent a fire from even starting," said Janet Ruiz, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute. "And it helps our policyholders. It's a lot less trauma for a policyholder if their home doesn't burn down than if it does."

'A notorious case'

Private firefighting firms date back to at least the 1980s, when the U.S Forest Service contracted with outside parties, said Debbie Miley, executive director of the National Wildfire Suppression Association. The group represents more than 150 companies who can field up to 10,000 firefighters and about 9,000 pieces of equipment, from bulldozers to medical stations.

"Our folks," Miley said, "are kind of the boots on the ground that try to stop the fire until it gets to the structures."

They've operated with little public attention, as has Escondido's Capstone Fire & Safety Management, which has a fire-prevention contract with San Diego Gas & Electric. Ditto, Wildfire Defense Services, which has worked for insurance companies for 11 years.

But the industry received massive -- and massively unwelcome -- publicity last November. During the Woolsey wildfire, private firefighters defended the Hidden Hills home of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. After saving the couple's $60 million mansion from the flames, they were singed by criticism.

"That was a notorious case," said Caroll Wills, communications director for the California Professional Firefighters. "The incident command team had no idea those people were in there."

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Online, the reaction was equally hot. A headline on the Vice website: "Rich People Pay for Private Firefighters While the Rest of Us Burn."

Industry officials insist that was a rare case of reckless freelancers, failing to cooperate with local authorities. Besides, Ruiz said, most in this field stress preventive maintenance, as they work to increase the safety of people insured by Chubb, AIG, USAA, Pure, Nationwide, Travelers and other firms.

"The fire services may move woodpiles, remove debris from the yard, spray fire retardant on the deck or the home, clear the gutters, get pine needles off the roof," Ruiz said. "There are some that will put out a fire, if it comes to that. But I've seen the AIG trucks -- they don't even call them fire trucks."

Instead, the large red trucks are identified as "AIG Wildfire Protection Units."

That can confuse local residents, Wills said, especially in the chaos of a wildfire.

"They might see an engine go by," Wills said, "and wonder why their home isn't being protected."

While the efforts of private reinforcements can help contain a wildfire, even save lives and property, their government-funded colleagues view them as a mixed blessing.

"Public firefighters don't have the luxury of picking and choosing who or what we protect," Wills said. "Our primary responsibility is the protection of life and putting the fire out. When these private people go into a fire zone, they become another life that needs to be protected, one more risk that those public agency firefighters have to take."

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Rescuers

Still, few would dispute Wildfire Defense Services's Torgerson bottom line: "More resources are better. More qualified firefighters are better."

Since his company's birth, wildfires have grown in number and size. So have the number of homes built in the wildlife-urban interface, land inside or on the perimeters of once-remote forests, canyons, deserts and grasslands.

Verisk Analytics, a data analyzing firm that works with insurance companies, reported in 2017 that wildfire poses a "high or extreme risk" to 4.5 million American homes. That figure includes more than 2 million in California and 254,000 in San Diego County. Among U.S counties, San Diego ranks second, trailing only Los Angeles County's 443,300.

After San Diego County's devastating 2007 Witch fire killed two and destroyed more than 1,200 homes and an additional 500-plus other structures, Chubb included private fire protection in its policies here.

"It's a complimentary service," said Vanessa Snodgrass, chief operating officer at Rancho Santa Fe Insurance & Financial Services. "We've seen it in action."

In 2014, the caretaker of a home in Rancho Santa Fe's Crosby Estates texted Snodgrass a series of alarming photos, showing the flames of a wildfire drawing closer and closer.

"Then," Snodgrass, "he received notification from Chubb that the Wildfire Defense Service had been sent out."

The rescuers sprayed the policyholder's home with a fire-retarding gel, then swept away combustible materials from the area. The house emerged unscathed.

Last month, though, Chubb was among the insurance companies that declined to renew coverage of numerous homes in the Rancho Santa Fe-Fairbanks Ranch region, according to the Rancho Santa Fe Review.

A Chubb spokesperson declined to be interviewed for this story. Among the unanswered questions: how many policies have been canceled? Did the Crosby Estates house lose its coverage? How many local residents are still covered by Chubb's fire prevention and suppression services?

10,000 fires a year

More than a decade ago, Torgerson had a realization. While his Montana firm had spent seven years supplying fire-fighting equipment and manpower to government agencies, he saw greater opportunities elsewhere.

"I recognized that wildfires would be something that the insurance industry would likely be considering," he said.

In fact, Travelers and others were seeking a way to minimize claims from clients ravaged by wildfires. Many signed with Torgerson's Wildfire Defense Systems, and the business flourished. Today, the company's 300-plus employees are in constant demand.

"When we started working for insurance companies in 2008," he said, "it was definitely on a shorter time frame. We had a peak season of three months or six months or, really, more like nine months. Within a year or two, it became 12 months."

Inside the company's Bozeman headquarters, computers annually track roughly 10,000 fires, some as small as one acre. When a blaze heads toward a policyholder's property, teams are mobilized.

Wildfire Defense Services is no stranger to San Diego County, having responded to the Bernardo fire in 2014 and the Lilac fire in 2017. With no permanent stations, the company relies on roving teams who usually arrive at a wildfire on the second day. They report to the incident command center, Torgerson said, and request access to specific sites where policyholders have property.

"Permission is granted 97 percent of the time," Torgerson said.

"They will pick up a hose if need be," said the Insurance Information Institute's Ruiz, "but generally speaking the goal is to get out there and get the property ready."

That can complicate the strategy established by municipal and state firefighters, especially since the private squads fall outside the normal command structure.

"They are kind of doing their own thing," said Cal Fire's Shoots. "From our standpoint, we are kind of hoping that they get in there and do their work and get out."

Yet clients continue to find uses for these independent squads. San Diego Gas & Electric hired Capstone in 2009, after investigators found that the utility's sparking equipment was a cause of the 2007 Witch fire. Capstone's main task, an SDG&E spokeswoman said, was to prevent conditions that could lead to catastrophic fires.

"This is not our own fire department," said the utility's Zoraya Griffin. "This is just another mitigation effort."

Capstone crews accompany SDG&E teams when the latter perform certain duties -- welding, say, or tree-trimming -- in areas with an elevated fire risk. On days of extreme fire conditions, Griffin said, Capstone accompanies all SDG&E personnel in the field.

One steamy high-fire-threat evening last year in Mission Valley, Capstone workers assigned to a utility crew spotted smoke curling up from Mission Valley. They called 911, then rushed to the site and kept a hose on the blaze until the San Diego Fire Department arrived.

"We were told that the way conditions were that night," Griffin said, "that fire had the potential to be a major event if Capstone had not been there."

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