Fire Departments Struggle To Meet Demands Of Rural Communities

Here are the morning’s top stories on Monday, December 22, 2025…

• In Humboldt County, a rural volunteer fire station is struggling to meet its community’s needs. They’re hoping a state budget allocation to expand Calfire staffing might offer some support, but nothing has materialized yet. 
• The Trump administration continues to drastically shrink the immigration courts in Northern California –  leaving just a few judges to handle a massive backlog of cases. 
• California transportation officials say they’ve paused a plan to resume issuing thousands of commercial driver’s licenses, under federal pressure.

Rural Fire Station Struggles To Meet Demands Of Community It Serves

There are more than 200 volunteer fire departments in the state. Many of them provide services to rural parts of the state.

In Humboldt County, the Willow Creek Fire Station is a small volunteer operation. Chief Samantha Smith said they respond to any emergencies and medical calls for the town of 1,700. And they’re also first responders for the surrounding area – which includes about a 70 mile stretch of state route 299, a major thoroughfare that connects the California coast to the I-5. “We are in a mountainous area and cars go over the edge,” Smith said.

But the department is shrinking, even as the amount of calls they respond to goes up year by year. Smith said that’s partly because fewer people are moving into town. And it’s not just Willow Creek that’s experiencing this. Chief Eddie Sell is president of the California State Fire Association. “There are many places in California that just rely solely on volunteer fire departments,” he said. “And it has been tougher, with recruitment and retention.”

State Senator Tim Grayson wants Calfire to be fully staffed year round – especially after the Eaton Fire broke out last winter. “We are no longer in what we call fire seasons, but the fire season is actually all 12 months,” Grayson said. California has approved over $100 million to transition 3,000 seasonal Calfire staff to permanent status. But so far, the agency has not transitioned any personnel.

San Francisco Immigration Court Down To Four Judges After New Departures

Half a dozen immigration judges are departing the Northern California immigration courts this month, leaving just a handful of judges to handle a massive case backlog, as the Trump administration continues an unprecedented push to remake the court system by eliminating judges who are more likely to grant asylum.

Two immigration judges were fired late Friday: Arwen Swink, who has served nearly nine years on the San Francisco bench, and Denise Hunter, who was appointed to the Sacramento bench in 2022. In addition, four San Francisco judges are taking retirements that some told attorneys they were pressured into. They are Howard Davis, Charles Greene, Patrick O’Brien and Joseph Park, according to Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Bar Association of San Francisco.

The exodus comes on top of the previous firings of 12 San Francisco immigration judges this year. Nationwide, more than 100 immigration judges have been forced out of their jobs, leaving roughly 600 adjudicators to handle 3.4 million cases.

San Francisco’s court, which had 21 judges earlier this year, will now have four. It is one of the nation’s busiest, with a backlog of more than 120,000 cases. Along with the historically smaller courts in Concord and Sacramento, it handles all the asylum and other deportation cases from Bakersfield to the Oregon border. The Sacramento bench, which has been reduced to three judges from six, is responsible for 30,000 cases. The Concord court, which opened last year with a promise to hire 21 judges, currently has seven judges and 60,000 cases on its docket.

California Delays Plan To Reissue Commercial Licenses, Drivers Mired In Uncertainty

California has paused its plan to resume issuing contested commercial driver’s licenses under pressure from the Trump administration, according to state transportation officials, leaving thousands of immigrant truck and bus drivers uncertain if they can keep their jobs.

The delay is the latest twist in a months-long dispute between California and the federal government over non-domiciled commercial drivers’ licenses for noncitizens who are authorized to work but lack permanent residency (or a green card).

At stake is more than $150 million in federal highway funding that the U.S. Department of Transportation threatened to withhold from California unless the state fixes problems with its non-domiciled CDL program, including licenses that expired at a later date than the driver’s work permit. After a state review found more than 20,000 licenses had incorrect expiration dates, due to Department of Motor Vehicles clerical errors, the agency sent those drivers 60-day cancellation notices. The licenses of most of these drivers, 17,000, are now set to be rescinded on Jan. 5. Many of them are Sikh truckers, with roots in Punjab, India, who said they have valid work permits and the revocations threaten their livelihoods and families.