We have a National Strategy for updating our response to ever-hotter wildfires. With years of learning, careful consultation, and consideration, the Cohesive Wildfire Strategy offers a chance to respond to climate change and its effect on wildfires. But will personnel problems in our federal agencies sabotage the National Strategy?
Driven by the FLAME Act of 2009, the National Strategy gives energy and coherence to fire management during climate change. Inherent in this national strategy is an assumption that governments on all levels can hire a skilled workforce to respond to fires in ever more creative ways over the next few decades.
Yet we learn that the US Forest Service and the National Park Service have such arcane hiring systems that young people eager to join wildland fire crews are often thwarted and frustrated by problems injected into the system at Washington headquarters.
Once hired, firefighters find their pay and living situations so inadequate that they often quit or find themselves demoralized and nearly homeless. Many fire jobs are seasonal, and they need a clear career ladder with full benefits, as would benefit professionals who risk their lives for the public.
Firefighting or fire management requires both physical and mental skills. Firefighters must understand how fires work and how to stay safe, and they need to understand fuels, landscape features, weather, and fire organizations and how all these things affect fire behavior and their ability to change fire behavior. Just because these professionals wear dirty clothes and work in the woods doesn’t mean they don’t have skills that take years to develop and that only some people outside their profession can understand.
While fire science and hard experience lead us to promising advances in wildfire strategy that may enhance the health of forests nationally, our agencies may not be able to deliver the people to implement these advances. We can thank neglect from Congress for this malaise for failing to appreciate firefighters despite the growing wildfires that all their offices hear about every fire season. Big fires happen even in red states, and homes burn everywhere wildfires break out. Yet when it’s time to appropriate money for the federal land agencies, republicans vote to make deep cuts, knowing they are hamstringing fire response efforts that protect their constituents.
Will our government be able to respond to a large wildfire bearing down on your community in the future? Surely, the agencies intend to respond, but if budget cuts, poor pay, and a shortage of qualified workers hamstring the agency, they may fail. Can local or private firefighters take up the slack? No, because the federal government provides the bulk of firefighting forces in states with large areas of federal land. Even so, state, county, and private fire organizations pay better than the federal government.
Reuters reports that California federal firefighting organizations only had 65% of needed staff in 2023. Montana and Idaho reported similar hiring shortfalls. California US Forest Service officials report a 50% drop in applications for firefighting positions at all pay levels. There is no reason why other regions wouldn’t face firefighter shortages.
Cal Fire pays almost twice what the Forest Service pays a seasonal employee, yet Cal Fire officials say they depend heavily on federal firefighters to manage large fires.
Firefighters who move up the ranks sometimes join Incident Management Teams (IMTs) that command large fire operations. Today, we have a shortage of federal IMTs even as the number and size of fires increase nationally. With retirements and people leaving the federal service for other organizations or career paths, IMTs are increasingly in short supply.
Would higher pay for firefighters solve these problems? Higher pay would help retain firefighters, but other problems plague the federal system. High housing costs almost everywhere make it difficult for non-permanent workers in all agencies to find housing. Employees without housing reject job offers.
The USA Jobs federal hiring system provides job applicants with endless frustrations. It is slow and unresponsive and people who apply for jobs wait for weeks for any response. Rather than finding agency employees, the system drives them away.
At the National Park Service, seasonal employees, including firefighters, are prohibited from working more than 6 months by new Office of Personnel Management regulations. So even if the agency needs workers for more months, they cannot retain the firefighter or other seasonal ranger. Combined with low pay and housing problems, this problem is driving people away from the NPS.
The possibility of a new Trump administration in 2025 is looming over this whole picture. The conservative organizations handling Trump’s policy plans have announced that they plan deep cuts in all environmental agencies and will make those cuts with or without the approval of Congress. They promise to put Trump loyalists deep within all agencies. Republicans in Congress engage in this same “culture war” framing, attacking conservation, science, and “the deep state,” which seems to include all agencies at all levels of operation. Significant budget shortfalls and agencies demoralized by political meddling could be the norm if Trump wins in 2024.
The climate is warming and drying in the West, and the big fires we saw last summer in Canada may be a harbinger of those coming to the United States. Already, we are seeing fires like the Hermit Peak Fire in New Mexico that grow very large and fast and outstrip the ability of firefighters to manage them even on their margins.
The National Cohesive Fire Management Strategy has many progressive elements that would advance fire management to adapt to climate change. But with a shortage of fire managers at all levels, we may need to accept a world where fires bear down on communities and far too few people; without overhead organizations are there to respond.
copyright Tom Ribe
