 Just take one look at the statewide fire map. No region has been spared and the summer doesn't look much better. Here at the Cal Fire Academy, these firefighters are learning the necessary skills to fight fires and save lives. Situated on a sprawling campus in Ione, a small northern California town about 40 miles from Sacramento, the Cal Fire Academy is a state of the art facility. So we made our inspection cut, correct? Students take seven week courses in either the company officer or firefighter academies or often both. It's here where the groundwork is laid. Training is being done year round. When one class graduates, the next one arrives just two days later. They work together, train and study together. The bond for these firefighters is forever. The seven-week program develops a very strong bond with the students. They spend seven weeks together fighting through exams, studying long nights of studying with long days in the heat doing drills. So their bond becomes very strong. Students arrive on campus with basic knowledge. Learning advanced firefighting skills begins here at the academy and is incorporated here on the front lines. It's the framework of what we do and who we are in Cal Fire. Students learn in the classroom and in the field. Hands-on scenarios include commercial-based and residential structure fires for attack and searches. Mobile attacking fires around power lines with the intent of preventing injury and fire expansion as well as wildland-urban interface focusing on defensible space while assessing and securing the structure. Once they leave here they'll be ready to start their 30-year career. You're always learning and there's always more training to be had and training never stop. 90% of these students are seasonal firefighters. In extreme cases though, academy instructors may accelerate the program such as what happened in 2013. We've gone into drawdown solo where we've actually had to use the students and the instructors here to staff engines to respond to incidents. Cal Fire on average responds to nearly 2,500 fires from January through early July. This year Cal Fire had responded to more than 2,900 fires in that same span. Nearly 700 more fires have already burned compared to last year and it doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon.