Shasta County Fire and CDF are dispatched by the CDF ECC and share resources as if it was one big department. This is nice since CDF stations are scattered across the county and the County stations can pick up the areas in between. During any incident, you should hear both CDF and County resources being utilized.
Fire Radio
Shasta County Fire's radio system is mainly a CDF system, with the standard local net, county net and tacticals. However, the county still has hold of some of their frequencies before they were fully branded by CDF. The Anderson and Cottonwood fire nets are utilized by department training or tactical overflow. During the 4th of July or other major Fairgrounds based operations, Anderson Fire Net is cooking. The county net 154.430 is simulcast on 453.000. Word has it that the entire county resources will be working on CDF Local net now and the county net will be utilized by either tactical or a county wide command net that units can switch to without getting ECC approval for a state command net. Butte has a county command net also for this purpose.
I-Zone
The fire danger in Shasta County should just be tagged as extreme for the duration of Fire Season. The county is where the urban valley floor meets the forest and wildland. This is called the Urban/Rural Interface Zone or I-Zone for short. This means there are countless houses built for urbanization in and around wildland vegetation. During a wildland fire, these houses don't stand a chance unless the state mandated 30ft clearance is placed around the house and there's enough resources to protect the houses. With the geographics of the Redding basin, winds can whip up the 110 degree heat and the slightest spark will start off a firestorm. Firestorms usually happen deep in a forest. In Shasta County, they can occur on the valley floor where enough wildland interfaces with the urbanization and hundreds of houses are lost. Two such fires occurred in the same year, the Canyon Incident on the west side and the Jones Valley fire on the east side. Both burned hundreds of homes. This danger exists every fire season so watch and listen for it. The Fountain Fire in eastern Shasta County, one of six most destructive fires in CA history, still shows a 64,000 acre scar 11 years after an arsonist sparked the blaze in Augest of 1992. 17million seedlings were planted in 93, but they won't be productive for another 70 years. As you drive along 299east, you'll notice the "difference" in vegetation from Montgomery Creek to Burney. Although timber and vegetation were at a 100% loss, firefighters managed to save 201 out or 473 homes directly threatened, and 554 out of 1043 other buildings during the Fountain Fire.