The 6th Annual CAL FIRE Benevolent Foundation raffle is in the mail! Keep an eye out for the tickets to arrive in your mailbox and be sure to get them turned in on time. They're due April 22, 2022, and the drawing will be held on April 28 at the Annual Golf Tournament. They have some great prizes again this year!

Director Tyler told Fire Aviation that he was offered the Director position on March 3 and he started the next day. He is overseeing an appropriated budget of $3.7 billion and more than 9,600 civilian and uniformed staff who responded to more than half a million emergencies in 2021. His predecessor, Thom Porter, retired in December.

Visit http://www.stpatsparade.org/ for more info!

Head to Smile.Amazon.com and select the CAL FIRE Benevolent Foundation as your charity and start shopping!

*The Foundation may also be found listed under its previous name,

Via CAL FIRE Wellness Instagram: @calfirewellness

CalPERS is adding the largest cost-of-living increases to retirees’ pensions in 32 years due to high inflation.

Public employees who retired between 2006 and 2014 and some others will receive a 4.7% bump this year, according to figures the California Public Employees’ Retirement System posted to its website Thursday.

That’s the largest increase since 1990, according to federal Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on which CalPERS’ calculations are based.

CAL FIRE Benevolent Foundation is on Instagram?

As a CAL FIRE employee, you are automatically a member of CalPERS. therefore, it is always important to keep your beneficiary or beneficiaries up to date. Early in your career, you are usually more concerned with learning how to do your job better, paying bills, becoming permanent, or promoting.

Think back to the day you were first and a personnel clerk or hiring coordinator shoved so many forms in front of you do not remember half of them. One of these you should have completed was called a Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Beneficiary form which is part of the hiring package If you were single, you may have designated a parent or your spouse if married.

If you do not have a valid beneficiary designation on file at the time of death, the benefits will be payable to your survivors according to California Law according to the Statutory Member Beneficiary Order. Benefits are then paid to the closest surviving family members in the following order:

A beneficiary designation filed after the initiation of a dissolution of marriage, an annulment, or termination of a registered domestic partnership is not revoked when the dissolution, annulment, or termination is finalized.

CalPERS will determine who the death benefits are payable to after they receive and review all the required documents from the Death Benefits Application Packet they send a beneficiary.

You can change your CalPERS beneficiary two ways: by downloading a form from the CalPERS publication website and mailing it to CalPERS or logging in to MyCALPERS to name, review, or change your beneficiary. I encourage all members and survivors should register for MyCALPERS. This is a private section of the PERS website where you can access real-time details about your CalPERS account. You can view your health information, plan for retirement, enroll in educational offerings, or schedule appointments.

As an active employee, you also signed another form when were hired. This form is from the State Controller called: Designation of Person(s) Authorized to Receive Warrants (STD 243). This is different from your beneficiary as it applies to warrants that may be due to you for hours worked and unused holidays, vacation, PLP, or funds the State may owe you in the future due to lawsuits and other decisions. Since this form does NOT change with the other life events listed above there may be occurrences where unclaimed checks must be paid to a divorced spouse instead of another intended family member because the form was never updated. Your personnel office should have a copy on file. See STD. 243 if you need to download & update your std 243 on file.

You may be surprised to see how many different places you have beneficiary information as an employee or retiree of Unit 8 or CAL FIRE plus a few others from our private life. These are NOT revoked by any of the events listed above as CalPERS beneficiaries are.

If later sign up with Deferred Compensation - the State Savings-Plus Program, you have to notify them on your own for any beneficiary changes for any life event changes. If you start making tax-deferred contributions to this program, you may easily have over $100,00 in your account by mid-career. See ENROLLMENT FORM (PDF 11/2015)BENEFICIARY DESIGNATION FORM (PDF 11/2015)

3.   Your Lifetime Monthly Beneficiary. This can be the same person or several people depending on which retirement option you choose and your personal needs or desires. These are found in the CalPERS publications 43 & 35

Service Retirement Election Application (PUB 43) (PDF)

Disability Retirement Election Application PUB 35 (PDF)

Your union has a form in the member section of our website called SURVIVOR'S BENEFIT CHECKLIST you can print and fill out. It lists the name and contact information, policy numbers for many of the organizations that you may have named beneficiaries for along with other useful information your spouse or other beneficiaries should have. Please fill it out together update it often and make its location known.

Submitted by State Retiree Director Brian Burger. Email him here.

Have you checked out the historical footage dating back to the 1940s?

The digitization of the California Revealed project is online and available to view.

More films will be added soon!

With Personal Exposure Reporting from California Professional Firefighters, firefighters can document exposures to toxins that can produce job-related illness.