Supporting California Wildfire Recovery

As California continues to recover from last month’s devastating Southern California fires, the Department of General Services (DGS) is committed to continuing to do everything as the State’s business manager to help support the ongoing recovery effort. Following the devastation last month, Governor Schwarzenegger ordered all State agencies to move quickly to ensure fire commanders, emergency managers, local government officials and ultimately the general public got the help and resources they needed to respond to and recover from these devastating wildfires.

Over the past several weeks, DGS staff has been moving to secure cleanup contracts, line-up commercial space for recovery operations, and ensure that critical communications sites across the State were restored following the fires. With 4,000 staff statewide and responsibilities over managing real estate, funding school construction, purchasing and contracting, and emergency telecommunications, DGS has been uniquely positioned to help local government officials, as well as the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) get the resources they need to keep the recovery process moving forward. The other day, DGS secured contracts with nearly 90 companies that can provide help in cleaning up debris from the fires and putting erosion control measures in place across the burned-out landscape. DGS has also identified portable classrooms that school districts can use if necessary and secured 60,000 square feet of space for FEMA to warehouse donated goods. At the height of the fire siege, DGS’ Telecommunications staff was deployed to numerous fire scenes to repair critical emergency radio sites that had been damaged. Moving forward, DGS is continuing to work closely with OES to meet any ongoing business needs that are identified and appreciates the opportunity to help California recover and rebuild.

Learn more about DGS at http://www.dgs.ca.gov/.

Anwar Merchant is a Government of Canada On-Line Research Panel member.