The toll has increased. Twenty-four people have died in the fires that have ravaged California since last Tuesday, authorities announced on Sunday January 12. The fires, still out of control, have destroyed more than 12,000 buildings, according to initial estimates.
Alongside firefighters from local and state agencies in Los Angeles, private responders drive around in their white vans, monitoring individual homes.
These teams, whose services cost several thousand euros, have become a symbol of inequality in the fight against fires. Since 2018 and the Woolsey fire, they have attracted criticism, accused of having accentuated divisions between classes during disasters by favoring the richest.
The controversy has gained new momentum on social networks. “Does anyone have access to private firefighters?”I am ready to pay any amount”a wealthy Palisades resident posted on X, triggering a flood of hateful comments. For his part, former billionaire candidate for LA mayor Rick Caruso called on private firefighters to protect his Palisades Village shopping complex as the neighborhood was reduced to nothing.
On the ground, these interventions are not unanimous either. “When we see groups of private firefighters arriving, we do not consider them an asset»declared to New York Times Brian Rice, president of California Professional Firefighters, which represents 35,000 public firefighters. In addition, most of these private firefighters are trained to work in forests, whereas “Firefighting in Los Angeles takes place in an urban environment”.
A stratospheric cost
However, it is impossible to ignore their role in the United States. About 45 percent of all firefighters working in the country today are employed in the private sector, according to the National Wildfire Suppression Association, an organization that represents more than 300 private firefighting groups.
Installation of fire breaks and watering systems, installation of fire-retardant gel… A large part of the work of these teams is preventive. And given the scale of the recent fires, some wealthy owners are calling on them directly to save their homes.
However, most of these private firefighters work for insurance companies. Indeed, large groups such as AIG, Chubb and USAA offer policies that include fire protection. Saving a multimillion-dollar home from burning allows the insurer to avoid paying a large sum to the homeowner. Hence the use of private firefighters to compensate for the lack of resources of the emergency services dependent on the public service.
Water, at the heart of the controversy
To recruit such teams, owners and insurers must pay thousands of dollars. According to the New York Timesthis service can cost between $3,000 and $10,000 per day, depending on the workforce mobilized.
Added to the question of price is the question of water availability. In one of the richest cities in California, an American state heavily affected by drought, this resource is worth gold. Bryan Wheelock, vice president of Grayback Forestry, a private firefighting company in Oregon, is defending himself in the New York Times. He said private firefighters usually carry only a few hundred liters of water in their white trucks. And when working in remote locations, fire crews draw water from nearby ponds and lakes.
When flames break out in urban areas, such as Los Angeles, the use of public fire hydrants becomes a major concern. In the early hours of the Los Angeles fires, private firefighters turned to this water source for resupply, after first draining their clients’ swimming pools. These hydrants then dried up, while city and county firefighters had to refuel themselves, raising the question of whether this fundamental resource was free in emergency situations.
