 Coming up. California has lived this nightmare before. The state is on fire and there's an abundance of fuel to burn. We've showed you how to be ready for another long fire season. So what is the state doing to prepare? And what resources are available to fight these fires? We'll also look back to one of the worst fire sieges in state history, next on Inside Look. Welcome to this week's Inside Look. I'm Jonathan Goodell. It's hard to believe it was only 10 years ago that California faced an unprecedented number of wildfires, making 2008 one for the record books. The statistics from that year tell an incredible story of the challenges faced by first responders. We'll take a look back in a moment. But first, how has California prepared itself for this year's fire season? Our own Rob Mayberry joins us from the State Operations Center with more. Rob? That's right, John. Officials here at the nerve center have learned a lot in the past 10 years when it comes to dealing with wildfires. We spoke with two of our emergency managers who shared with us just how OES is preparing for this season. As soon as we see that something's going big, we then pull the trigger, pull in our incident support team, and within an hour we'll have an initial group of people here in the state operations center, and then we'll start to call in additional staff depending on how big and what the particulars are of the incident. California is no stranger to disasters on a massive scale, and the response to those disasters must also be massive. At Cal OES, it is our responsibility to make certain systems are up and ready, and staff are prepared at the state operations center in the event of an emergency. So some of the things that we do to get prepared for that is we review all of our standard operating procedures that are specific to those types of incidents, do refresher training with our folks here, both at the morning center, our incident support teams, as well as with our statewide law, fire, and regional duty officers. Most of what is tracked here is valuable data used by emergency managers and decision makers to assist in response efforts. So for example, behind me you'll see we've got a fire dashboard, we have a weather journal, we have a fire situational awareness journal, so we'll update those products as we go into a particular season that highlights the incidents that are more likely to happen. And make sure that we're providing our executives the information that allows them to understand the current threat as well as be able to understand any incidents that are happening right away. And getting prepared doesn't stop at the state operations center, but extends into California's counties where inland region administrator Ron Quigley spends most of his time. All of our Cal OES regional staff spend a lot of time doing exercising training throughout the year to make us better prepared to work with our operational areas, and at the same time our operational areas, which is otherwise known as our counties. Ron and his team train closely with counties to reduce blind spots in emergency readiness. It's been real important for us to reach out to our communities and assure that we are doing everything we can to collaborate and coordinate with them to make sure they understand the things that they need to know, the things they should be thinking about, such as sheltering the multi-agency coordination and the biggest piece that a lot of counties don't think about initially, which is the recovery piece, because when you start losing structures, when you start losing infrastructure, those take tremendous tolls on the communities. So John, the reality is that wildfires are going to happen here in our state, but we are far better prepared today with advancements in tools, technology, and simply training to deal with these threats, which hopefully will reduce the loss of lives and property. Back to you, John. Alright Rob, thank you very much. And earlier today we caught up with Cal Fire to discuss their preparations for another challenging year. Brad Alexander joins us now with that part of the story. Thanks John, that's right. Firefighting in California every year is a big challenge, especially recent years with the drought that we've had, drought conditions still persisting. Today joining me is Scott McLean from Cal Fire's Communications Shop. Thank you so much for joining us today Scott. Thank you for having me. So let's talk about that challenge that you have this year in 2018. Right, we're looking at over 200 more wildland fire responses already this year than last year this time, burning over 240,000 acres. We just included the stats for the Pawnee, the county, and the Klamathon into those figures. And now we're looking at the Ferguson fire, which is also a forest service fire, but that's over 17,000 acres that they're having to deal with right now. So we're well ahead of the numbers from last year, and even the average, the five-year average. You mentioned the Ferguson fire. What are some of the conditions that are helping that fire just grow so immensely? That fire is doing what we call a fuel and topography-driven fire. By that I mean the terrain is just straight up and down. It's very rugged, very inaccessible. Firefighters are having to determine how to get out ahead of that fire and put those lines. It's just so dangerous, most of those areas to work straight on the line. The fuel, I mean that fuel is extremely dry. We're talking about tree mortality areas as well, where we're looking at 129 million dead trees throughout California, but between the brush and those dead trees in the Ferguson area, it just amplifies that fire. Last year was also a massive year in firefighting for California, and it's been actually 10 years since the 2008 fire siege. I wanted to see what you remember about the 2008 year now that it's been 10 years since. I was in Butte County for the 2008 fire siege, if you want to say it. And you have to understand all of Northern California for the most part had significant fires in several different areas, in areas that we wouldn't expect fires to burn, where you'd think in those counties that have so much moisture, fires are burning without a problem. Inversion layers came over so low and held that smoke down so low for so many days in a row. There was fires we didn't even know about until we had some IR flights up there and discovered them. Obviously, there were huge lessons learned after 2008, the quantity of fires, the challenge that came out of that year. Can you talk about a few of the things that Cal Fire learned through 2008? From 2008, we were able through the Mastery Mutual Aid System to garner those resources and keep getting those resources. A lot of relationships were developed with other states as well, which enabled us to get more resources nowadays a lot quicker. All the way, I remember a train loading, a bunch of rail cars loading up with engines from Massachusetts, for an example, that were being shipped out here with their crews to help us. And again, that doesn't even include the other countries such as Australia that came to help as well. And it's a big team that fights all these big fires in California. We were talking earlier and we had mentioned how the public is part of that as well, right? Right. The public needs to be, and they are part of this team, and they need to take the responsibility on to be prepared. And by that, I mean, get your defensible space done early, the Ready, Set, Go program. Be ready to evacuate when the time comes. It's not if, it's going to be when. You need to take the responsibility on the public to be prepared. Have that go kit ready to go. Know your ways out of your community. Make sure you have a couple of different ways to get out and make sure you provide for the elderly in your community as well as pets. So there's a lot of things that are going on that need to be taken care of. That's right. It's a tough conversation to have. It's something that you don't want to think about, but it's an important conversation to have with your family, your loved ones, even your coworkers and your boss. That's correct. And I mean, you know, we're going to be there. Law enforcement and fire resources are going to be there to help, but we need you to help us help you as well to be prepared. Before we wrap up the conversation, is there any resources you want to point folks to so they can see what are the important steps for having those types of discussions? I appreciate that, Brad. Yes, ready for wildfire.org is a fantastic website. A lot of information on how to be prepared prior to, what to do during and what to do after as well. And go to our website too to follow any significant incidents and that's fire.ca.gov. Well, thank you so much for the discussion today, Scott. Hopefully a lot of people listen to the message and have those plans ready to go. Thank you very much, Brad. All right. Thanks, Brad and Chief McClain. It was a decade ago, more than 1.6 million acres burned during the nine month siege in 2008. 2,200 structures were destroyed, hundreds of injuries and 13 fatalities. Now 10 years later, California is again battling a torrent of wildfires. Just last year, the October and December wildfires consumed hundreds of thousands of acres. And this year is already off to a dangerous start. Fighting fires is a multi-agency effort. The task is grueling and seemingly never-ending. Having resources readily available is vital inside and outside of Caloas. That's where agencies such as Cal Fire and the California National Guard play a huge role. The system here in California is critical. I mean, we have relied on all of the fire departments in California, our federal partners, the state, for decades. And it's becoming more and more critical to have those resources available. Mutual aid resources from the north to the south and everywhere in between are ready and willing to assist. Those resources strategically coordinated through state partnerships arrive in various forms from the ground and air. There is no break and Cal Fire comes to us every year for aviation support, whether it's fixed-wing aircraft, water bucket carrying helicopters, general-purpose aviation. On many, many years, and matter of fact, almost every year in the past four or five years, we've mobilized soldiers and airmen to do ground hand crews. With summer heating up across the state, dry conditions are fueling extreme fire risks. We have to always be ready. This is California. It's going to catch on fire, and we'll be there to help put them out. Well, firefighters have responded to more than 3,200 fires so far this year, already more than last year at this time, and more than the five-year average. And it's only July. Well, that's it for this edition of Inside Look. For all of us here at Cal OES, I'm Jonathan Goodell. We'll see you next time. Visit our online newsroom at oesnews.com to learn more about this program and get the latest news and information from our team. Don't miss our next video on your Facebook timeline. Like our page and you'll get the latest posts as they happen. If you're an Instagram user, you can see the latest snapshots by following our Cal OES Instagram account. And Twitter users can get instant access to our tweets from across the state by following Cal OES.