North Coast Cal Fire crews test readiness for wildfire season near Redway
Crews hiked 3.3 miles with gear near Redway, where one failed drill can keep a North Coast hand crew off mutual aid just as fire season nears.
North Coast firefighters spent the week grinding through a Redway readiness test that can decide whether Humboldt, Del Norte and Mendocino crews are cleared to leave home and reinforce the region when the first major fire breaks.
On Green Diamond Resource Company property near Redway, Cal Fire crews were checked on equipment inspections, fire-shelter deployment, physical fitness, fire-line construction and a timed 3.3-mile hike with gear. The hike was not just about speed. Captains were judged on pacing, tools had to stay properly spaced and crews had to finish with enough energy left to work a fire line after the climb.
The drill carried real consequences for the North Coast mutual-aid system. Passing is required for a crew to qualify as a Type 1 crew, the level that can be sent outside its home county during wildfire season. Crews that do not pass do not move on. They keep training until they do, which makes the Redway exercises a gatekeeper for how quickly help can be shared across Humboldt, Del Norte and Mendocino counties.
The setting was no accident. The Humboldt County Resource Conservation District says Redway sits in high and very high wildfire-risk zones, and the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council has long identified the community as a top priority because of its large, dispersed population, extensive wildland-urban interface and exposure to wind-driven fire from the northeast. The county’s Redway Shaded Fuel Break work began in April 2022 and included 21 acres treated with mastication and 45 acres treated by hand methods, including work near Humboldt Redwoods State Park’s Holbrook Grove and a ridgetop treatment area.
For residents, the message from the drill is blunt: evacuation readiness cannot wait for a fire start, and defensible space around homes in southern Humboldt will matter the moment a wind-driven run begins. CAL FIRE says it protects more than 31 million acres of California’s privately owned wildlands, and the department’s broader training system includes four state-of-the-art training centers built to keep its workforce ready for field conditions.
The National Interagency Fire Center says wildland fire preparedness levels run from 1 to 5, with higher levels used to make sure enough crews, aircraft and equipment are available for new incidents. In Redway, that national system was reduced to the basics of climbing, carrying, cutting and proving a crew could still work when the season turns hot.
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