This is regarding citizen support for firefighters battling the CZU Lightning Complex Fires.

         California has been devastated over the past years by extreme forest fires. I feel that our state needs to authorize an emergency services force to aid and assist our firefighters. As a resident, this is the second fire I have personally been affected by. I am an able bodied citizen that is willing to put my life on the line to help protect my community and I know there are tens of thousands of like minded citizens sitting idly by looking to do the same. The help I am specifically talking about is direct help of putting out the fire; ie: bucket lines, debris clearing, watching for falling embers, putting out spot fires, direct support to the fire crews. The goal here is to help firefighters and not impede on them in any way. There are smaller tasks that need to be dealt with that someone with little training could do so that our firefighters could be freed up to tackle the more pressing matters. Lawyers could easily write up a liability form protecting the state and local government from any repercussions. I am sure you are well aware that our population is made up of industrious, capable people that care fiercely for our natural resources and our communities. I do understand the risk factor; this will be an assistance role that will only take place in relatively safe conditions such as low wind with guidance from appropriate safety enforcement agencies. With our forest at such high risk and our firefighters spread so thin it seems negligent not to have such a service in place. California is also currently facing a shortage of inmate firefighters that is putting further strain on fire crews, further more reason to look to our citizens to assist with the grunt work and small duties. If fire crews entrust inmates to assist them there should be no reason citizens can't be entrusted with the same duties. The initial response to a lot of these initiatives is that it is too dangerous to have people in these areas, we reject this and think that leaving thousands and thousands of able bodied and willing citizens out of the fight is not working. Obviously resources are stretched thin but we do have one abundant resource that is untapped, able-bodied volunteer citizens. Waiver forms could be set up online via the fire department; it would have a register of citizens that have read and doc-u signed the waiver. The fire department could access the list and send out an email for people to call in or meet at a certain time and location to be placed with an emergency crew to assist for a certain amount of hours before checking out and leaving the area. As I have stated before the risk may be high but with waived liability and thousands of citizens dedicated to saving our homes and forests the positive outcome would surely outweigh the risk. Again this is no disrespect to the trained professionals putting their lives on the line; they just need more help. Please help the community you love by addressing this problem of gross understaffing of our fire crews. Thank you.