The California Division of Forestry and Hearth Safety will welcome 40 college students Monday to its model new firefighter coaching facility in Merced County as a part of a multiyear push to bolster its workforce.
The Atwater Coaching Middle, at a former Air Power base, joins three different coaching facilities that Cal Hearth stated will prepare about 1,600 firefighters in 2025. At full capability, Atwater can help 300 college students a 12 months to turn out to be entry-level firefighters and firm officers, chargeable for main operations within the area.
College students “might graduate from our academy and, their subsequent day, arrive on scene and must command the fireplace,” stated Nicole Gissell, a Cal Hearth assistant chief who helps oversee the facilities’ curriculum.
The opening comes amid reporting from ProPublica that greater than 4,500 federal firefighting jobs within the U.S. Forest Service — about 27% — stay vacant. In the beginning of the month, Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced the struggle to President Trump by sending his workplace a proposed government order that, he stated, challenged the administration to match the Golden State’s funding in hearth preparedness.
The primary of Cal Hearth’s coaching facilities opened in 1967 with 32 college students in Ione, Calif. It served because the division’s sole coaching middle till 2017, when, in fast succession, Cal Hearth opened areas in Riverside, then in Redding in 2023, and now Atwater in 2025.
Since 2017, the governor and state Legislature have almost doubled the variety of licensed hearth safety positions at Cal Hearth, in response to California Division of Finance knowledge. It corresponded to a doubling of the division’s price range from $2 billion within the 2017-18 price range to $4.2 billion within the 2024-25 price range — 90% of which is devoted to fireplace safety.
A Cal Hearth spokesperson stated the division, as of July, has 12,223 workers, together with seasonal firefighters — already above 2024’s excessive of 11,754. The division expects its variety of firefighters to peak with hearth season round September.
“Our coaching program might be among the finest within the hearth service,” Gissell stated, “and we’ve simply been rising within the final 5 years to fulfill the calls for of the division and to coach all 12,000 workers.”
The brand new Atwater middle will home two of the seven cadres of fireside instructors educating throughout the 4 facilities. By way of a 10-week program, college students study fundamental firefighting, hearth science, management abilities and tips on how to function hearth gear.
Past lecture rooms, Atwater has hearth towers, off-road driving programs and a collection of buildings used for search-and-rescue follow. College students will spend a full week working with stay hearth.
Cal Hearth is actively hiring throughout its hearth safety program, together with entry-level firefighters, heavy gear operators and battalion chiefs.
