The San Bernardino unit of Cal Fire has established two new firefighter hand crews. The new hand crews’ primary mission will be the suppression of wildfires and fuels reduction in San Bernardino, Inyo, and Mono counties. Each BDU crew will consist of two fire captains and 12 firefighters. The hand crews will be staffed from July through October and can be extended to meet the needs of the 2020 fire season. The fire captains selected for the assignment bring a combined 107 years of wildland fire fighting experience, with 60 of those years being hand crew experience. The firefighters hired come from a variety of backgrounds including new firefighters, military veterans, federal and local government firefighters with hand crew experience. The staffing of the new hand crews comes from a statewide reduction in the availability of inmate hand crews. Currently only 99 of Cal Fire’s inmate hand crews are available for incident response.
