CCCC

To follow up on my notion that California should start to take preventative measures to prevent its devastating wildfires, I have constructed the following scenario:

California has approximately 100 million acres of land ... of which 43 million is devoted to agriculture ... see: California Statistics ... leaving 57 million probable 2/3rds of which are away from the wildfire vulnerable coastal region ... leaving around 20 million acres to address with fire prevention methods. Arbitrarily, I will assume that addressing one half of this land would greatly reduce the wildfire risk ... so we will take it from there.

Now, let us assume that California has decided to groom this amount of land to rid it of combustible material and creates a California Civilian Conservation Corps (CCCC) to do this ... call them the groomers for short. Now let us assume that each groomer can clear one acre of land a day of combustible material (some days less, some days more using machinery if necessary). This should mean about 200 acres a year, or 5 groomers for every thousand acres. This suggests that a CCCC of only fifty thousand able-bodied men and women could go a long way to preventing the type of infernos we have recently seen.

Now, assuming a minimum wage rate of $15 per hour and a 40 hour week with 30% more in benefits, each worker would cost about $40,000 per year. This means that the CCCC would cost around $2 billion per year. Using prisoners and welfare recipients could dramatically reduce this cost.

Comparing this outlay against the annual losses due to wildfires (and the cost of fighting these wildfires) seems to argue for California starting a CCCC of groomers. But initially finding this seed money in a state bloated with "diversity" and "inclusion" and green energy and bloated administrative and illegal immigrant health-care costs might take some real management skills which appear nonexistent as present.