There is a large patchwork of different firefighting agencies within CA, notably city FDs, county FDs, forest FDs, hotshots, and others. However, when a fire breaks out and gets out of control, departments from all over swarm to help. When the Line fire ripped through my area back in September, we had crews from all over the country.

The problem with these fires is that there are quite a few going at the same time at a time of year where fire fighters are laying low after the fire season, but also too that conditions prohibited flying. On top of which, more firefighters have responded but the amount of damage in the first 24 hours was the most catastrophic, in which there wasn't time for outside agencies to respond.