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Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS

Published: 28 March 2023

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — A program that aims to bring more diversity into the firefighting profession is seeking Native American women trainees.

Through the Yurok Tribe’s partnership with Redwood National Park, the Yurok Fire Department was selected to train four female firefighters for the National Park Service’s forward-looking Women in Fire Program.

“It is a huge privilege to train these firefighters for the Women in Fire Program,” said Yurok Fire Chief Rod Mendes, who has trained hundreds of firefighters. “We look forward to providing four Native American women the skills and experience they need to acquire good-paying jobs with tribal, federal or state wildland fire departments.”

"It is the goal of this program to recruit, train, and offer exposure to multiple aspects of wildland fire in addition to exposure to the planning and implementation of prescribed fire projects,” said Redwood National Park Fire Management Officer Rick Young.

“After completion of this program the participants will not only be able to compete for a career in wildland fire as a crewperson, but hopefully be inspired to continue on to become future leaders in the fire service,” said Young. “I’m excited to partner with the Yurok Tribe in this effort and I hope to expand the program in the coming years, creating more opportunities for a large segment of our community that is currently underrepresented within the fire service."

With $100,000 from the National Park Service, or NPS, the Yurok Fire Department is recruiting four Native American women to participate in the paid program.

Once hired, the Yurok Fire Department will put the women through an intensive wildland fire training academy focused on the fundamentals of wildland firefighting.

Based out of the department’s headquarters on the Yurok Reservation, the comprehensive training will consist of classroom instruction and hands-on skill-building exercises.

The classroom part of the course will cover a wide variety of topics, such as wildland fire behavior, firefighting tactics and the Incident Command System, as well as communications, fire line safety and situational awareness.

In the field, the four trainees will perform exercises with many different forms of firefighting equipment, ranging from fire pumps to chainsaws. They will also learn to work as a team.

The in-depth training will prepare program participants to pass the written and physical tests required to receive an interagency-certified Incident Qualifications Card, or Red Card, and a Firefighter 2 credential, which will qualify them to land firefighting jobs anywhere in the United States.

After they complete the training and certification process, the four women will work out of the Yurok fire house in Tulley Creek. On a daily basis, the firefighters will be assigned duties and respond to calls for service as members of the Yurok fire crew until the end of the 2023 fire season.

Their duties may include fighting local forest fires, participating in cultural burns on tribal lands and managing woodland fuels to protect elders’ homes.

The female firefighters will also spend stints with Redwood National Park and US Forest Service fire crews, which will further expand their skill sets.

The Yurok Fire Department is the first tribal firefighting organization to administer the transformational Women in Fire Program in California.

The National Park Service launched the program in 2021 in an effort to make its workforce more resilient and encourage more females to pursue leadership positions within the male-dominated profession. Women currently make up just 12% of the federal wildland fire workforce.

The Yurok Tribe and the park service recognize that diversity drives innovation, which is needed now more than ever before as the land managers confront climate change, drought and longer, more severe fire seasons.

Prior to partnering with the Yurok Fire Department, NPS implemented Women in Fire Programs with conservation corps in multiple states.

The Yurok Fire Department is an all-risk, all-hazard organization that focuses on fire detection, prevention and suppression in conjunction with traditional and conventional fuels management. The chartered tribal agency fights wildfires in the local area and across the US.

In addition to extinguishing fires, the Yurok crew conducts cultural burns to moderate forest fuel loads, improve wildlife habitat and increase access to traditional basket-weaving materials on tribal lands. When they are not contending with fires or performing controlled burns, the Yurok crew works on projects that reduce fire risk on the reservation.

The Yurok Fire Department is led by Chief Rod Mendes. Chief Mendes has more than 35 years of fire officer leadership experience, including lengthy terms as a district fire management officer for the Klamath National Forest and as the Chief of Fire and Office of Emergency Services for the Hoopa Valley Tribe, and over 20 years with Inter-agency Incident Management teams. He is also a governor-appointed member of California’s Homeland Security Advisory Committee.

Chief Mendes will design and oversee the Women in Fire Program training.

“I can say from experience Chief Mendes is a tremendous resource for new firefighters, especially those who want to climb the ranks. The park service couldn’t have selected a better mentor for participants in the Women in Fire Program,” said Yurok Firefighter and Yurok citizen Faith Tracy.

To apply for the Women in Fire Program on the Yurok Reservation, please fill out the Yurok Tribe employment application, which can be found here.

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Written by: Grace Melo, Texas A&M University; Pourya Valizadeh, Texas A&M University, and Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr., Texas A&M University

Published: 28 March 2023

 

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Despite the heightened poverty and unemployment seen when the COVID-19 pandemic got underway, many low-income U.S. children did not experience a decline in their emotional and mental health, we found in a new study.

We looked specifically at kids whose families were participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – commonly known as SNAP – the government program that helps low-income Americans afford food.

The government began to boost SNAP benefits in early 2020 to help offset pandemic-driven food insecurity for participating families, which now number around 41 million.

As a result, families got an extra US$95 or more per month for groceries to replace the meals children were missing at schools that had closed. Some eligibility rules were loosened to expand the program’s reach, and for the first time, people could buy groceries online with their SNAP benefits.

To learn whether these extra benefits affected children’s mental and emotional health, we analyzed five years of data collected by the National Survey of Children’s Health on 30,748 low-income families with children aged 6 to 17 years. The data, which included both families who were and were not getting SNAP benefits, covered the four years prior to the pandemic, as well as 2020.

Among the 8,680 families getting SNAP benefits during this period, 38% had at least one child with problems such as doctor-diagnosed mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral health issues – including anxiety and depression.

To assess whether the temporarily expanded benefits had an impact on these children, we conducted a “difference in differences” analysis: We compared data regarding children whose families enrolled in the SNAP program over time with children whose families didn’t get those benefits. In addition, we considered the potential influence of several factors that could play a role, such as parents’ mental health.

We found that children in families getting SNAP benefits in 2020 did not generally experience any change in their mental or emotional health compared to prior years, despite the heavy stress of the pandemic.

Why it matters

Typically, low-income children are more at risk of developing mental health or emotional problems, compared with high-income children. Our study adds to earlier evidence that SNAP benefits can lower that risk by reducing psychological distress and improving food security.

While 2020’s extra SNAP benefits protected children’s mental and emotional health, they did not improve it. This suggests that actually reducing food insecurity for low-income families would have required additional steps.

In March 2023, the federal government ended the pandemic-era SNAP expansions in 35 states and territories that hadn’t yet rolled them back. With inflation driving the cost of groceries up 11.4% in 2022, we believe that losing these benefits threatens the well-being of millions of families.

What’s next

We are now studying the effects of pandemic-related changes to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC.

We are looking at, for example, how expanding WIC benefits to cover canned, frozen and dried fruits and vegetables in addition to fresh produce has affected the low-income families’ purchasing behavior. Our team for this research also includes public health and nutrition scholars Alexandra MacMillan Uribe and Elizabeth Racine,

What is not known

When we did our study, data from the years after 2020 wasn’t yet available, so we couldn’t investigate the potential impact of subsequent pandemic-related changes to SNAP benefits. Notably, in 2021, the federal government increased maximum benefit levels by 15% and extended the extra $95 or more in monthly food assistance for the lowest-income households.

Grace Melo, ACES Faculty Fellow, Texas A&M University; Pourya Valizadeh, Research Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University, and Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr., Professor of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Written by: Elizabeth Larson

Published: 27 March 2023

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — An incoming storm system is expected to bring more rain plus cold temperatures and windy conditions through this week.

The National Weather Service has issued a hazardous weather outlook or Lake County, along with a freeze warning in effect until 9 a.m. Monday, a wind advisory for Monday at 8 p.m. to Tuesday at 5 a.m. and a winter weather advisory from 8 p.m. Tuesday to 5 a.m. Thursday.

“A strong storm system will impact the region Monday through Wednesday, resulting in heavy snow occurring across the interior mountains, as well as strong gusty winds developing over exposed ridges and coastal headlands,” the forecast explained. “After Wednesday, an additional period of wet weather is forecast to develop across Northwest California next weekend.”

The forecast said that Lake County’s highest ridges — primarily in the backcountry — will experience warning level snowfall amounts.

The specific Lake County forecast calls for rain beginning on Monday night and continuing through Wednesday night.

Thursday will be clear and sunny, before chances of rain return to the forecast Friday through Sunday.

The forecast expects winds with gusts of more than 20 miles per hour on Monday evening, with wind gusts of close to 40 miles per hour expected on Tuesday night.

Daytime temperatures this week and early into next week will range from a high of 50 degrees on Monday to a low of 45 degrees on Wednesday.

Conditions at night will range from the mid to high 30s, the forecast said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.