Burgum rolls out plan for Interior-based wildfire service
Tim Ingalsbee, executive director at Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, said Tuesday that Trump administration rhetoric suggests the key role that fire plays in land management isn’t being prioritized enough. “It’s retrograde, a throwback to talking about fire purely in terms of threat, risk, danger,” Ingalsbee said.
From bandannas to N95s: It’s finally time for wildfire fighters to mask up
According to the Los Angeles Times, Timothy Ingalsbee said masks are unsuitable during strenuous operations on steep terrain when they clog or restrict breathing. “There are times when masks are unsuitable and firefighters overheat and they are uncomfortable. But there’s a lot of times when they’d be very useful in limiting their exposure. And maybe could save some lives.”
The Los Angeles Times reported that masks may be especially useful in base camps or during vehicle movement on dusty access roads. It said such selective use could meaningfully reduce cumulative exposure even if not applied in all field tasks.
Urging Congressman Kevin Kiley to draft legislation opposing rescinding the Roadless Rule by the Trump administration (op-ed)
(P)erhaps the most powerful argument in Congressman Kiley’s arsenal to reinstate the Roadless Rule would be the increased threat of wildfires. Experts have noted that mature forests in these remote areas are highly resistant to fires and that human encroachment will intensify wildfire incidents.
“Roadless areas are some of the most wildfire-resilient landscapes in North America because they are the least degraded by industrial logging and road-building that would have converted fire-adapted native forests into fire-prone tree farms, and provided road access for human-caused ignitions from careless recreationists and sociopathic arsonists,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
Forest Service reverses decades-long ban, allows wildfire firefighters to use N95 masks
Ingalsbee said that masks are not always appropriate when fighting fires — there are activities, such as traipsing up and down steep terrain when a N95 mask can get gummed up with debris and sweat and make it difficult for a firefighter to breathe.
However, he said the vast majority of the time, when firefighters are at their base camps, where it’s often smoky, or driving along dusty, sandy roads, masks could go a long way to protect their lungs, reducing exposure.
“There are times when masks are unsuitable and firefighters overheat and they are uncomfortable,” he said. “But there’s a lot of times when they’d be very useful in limiting their exposure. And maybe could save some lives.”
U.S. wildfire fighters to mask up after decades-long ban on smoke protections
“This is going to make a huge difference in protecting people’s health,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the nonprofit group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology…noting that his worst exposures as a Forest Service firefighter had come while traveling old logging roads choked with smoke. “I wish I’d had the option to wear a mask,” he said.
Boosting timber harvesting in national forests while cutting public oversight won’t solve America’s wildfire problem
Trump, federal officials and members of Congress who are advancing legislation such as the Fix Our Forests Act have also called for speeding up approval of timber-harvesting projects by reducing public comment periods on proposals, limiting environmental analyses of the plans and curtailing the ability of groups to sue to block or change the projects in court.
Research shows that environmental reviews are rarely the main barrier to forest projects aimed at reducing fire risk.
The bigger obstacles are the shrinking of the federal forest workforce over the past two decades, the low commercial value of the small trees and brush that need to be removed, and the lack of contractors, processing facilities and markets for low-value wood.
‘If I Live to 25, I’ve Lived a Good Life’
For decades, wildfire fighters have been sent to work in toxic smoke without masks or warnings about long-term health risks, The New York Times has reported. They inhale poisons that are linked to more than a dozen kinds of cancer, including leukemia. Many are falling gravely ill, and some are dying at young ages.
But when these firefighters get sick, they don’t all receive the same help.
Wildfire veterans furious at DHS claim that raided crews were not firefighters
Wildland fire veterans are seething at a claim made by federal officials that two crews raided by immigration agents at the scene of a wildfire in Washington state were “NOT firefighters.”
Many political figures and media outlets have repeated the claim, even though public documents show the crews have firefighting classifications and were assigned to key frontline roles battling the blaze.
Heroic efforts — and preparation — saved hundreds of homes near the Flat Fire
Aside from the firefighters’ efforts, both Puller and Schulze credited homeowners for practicing Firewise guidelines, which recommend measures like clearing combustibles away from the first 5 feet of a home and keeping roofs and gutters clear of leaves and pine needles.
It’s a community-wide effort that Schulze said he saw throughout Sisters.
“Just driving through you can tell that there’s been a lot of Firewise prep in this area,” Schulze said. “And rightfully so. It’s probably the worst area in Oregon for fires. So I guess they’ve learned a thing or two about it.”
Firefighters question leaders’ role in Washington immigration raid
Wildland firefighters were stunned when federal immigration authorities last week raided an active wildfire response in Washington state, arresting two firefighters and sidelining crews for hours.
Wildfire veterans say the operation was nearly unprecedented, a breach in longstanding protocol that federal agents don’t disrupt emergency responders to check immigration status.
Worse, many wildfire veterans believe the management team overseeing the fire crews played a key role in handing over the firefighters to immigration authorities.
Border Patrol arrested firefighters as they were battling a wildfire
The immigration raid by Border Patrol agents on an active fire scene shocked many veteran wildland firefighters. Several of them said they could not remember a similar episode happening in the past. And some worried that such enforcement efforts would distract firefighters working in strenuous environments and have a chilling effect among a workforce that relies heavily on immigrant labor.
“Firefighting is a difficult, dangerous job and firefighters need to keep their focus on the fire,” said Dale Bosworth, a former chief of the U.S. Forest Service. “We don’t need to have those kind of distractions. It’s dangerous.”
Environmental groups decry plan to rescind Roadless Rule
The Trump administration and the USDA contend that roadless rules have been a hindrance to wildfire prevention.
That assertion is refuted by many experts, who note that roads are one of the primary vectors that cause wildfires and that mature forest in remote and difficult-to-access roadless areas is among the most resilient to fire.
5 years after Oregon’s Labor Day fires, scientists find surprises in streams
Scientists have been studying how water quality and wildlife have fared in 30 streams in the five years since Oregon’s Labor Day Fires, one of the state’s most extreme wildfire events. Now, their preliminary results are turning the scientific understanding of fire recovery on its head. Instead of suffering, aquatic wildlife is thriving in all of the streams — with one exception — where salvage logging has occurred.
150,000 acres of Six Rivers National Forest wilderness could lose protection if Trump administration rescinds roadless rule
“Roadless areas are some of the most wildfire-resilient landscapes in North America because they are the least degraded by industrial logging and road-building that would have converted fire-adapted native forests into fire-prone tree farms, and provided road access for human-caused ignitions from careless recreationists and sociopathic arsonists,” Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE), wrote in a prepared statement. “Tearing open roadless areas to industrial logging and road-building will do wildland firefighters no favors — just the opposite.”
Federal agents arrest firefighters working on WA wildfire
Two people fighting the Bear Gulch fire on the Olympic Peninsula were arrested by federal law enforcement Wednesday, in a confrontation described by firefighters and depicted in photos and video.
Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday about the confrontation.
“You risked your life out here to save the community,” the firefighter said. “This is how they treat us.”
How a ‘good fire’ in the Grand Canyon exploded into a raging inferno
Timothy Ingalsbee, another former Forest Service firefighter and the executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, said the federal firefighting workforce has been shrinking for years due to an inability to recruit new employees for the remote, grueling work.
But losing so many experienced people this year created a huge and sudden “brain drain,” he said.
Wildfire disasters are increasingly in the news, yet less land is burning globally – here’s why
With intense, destructive fires often in the news, it can seem like more land is burning. And in parts of the world, including western North America, it is.
Globally, however, our team of fire researchers also found that the total area burned actually declined by 26% over those two decades.
Private land used for logging is more prone to severe fire than public lands. A new study shows why
And while public lands are less likely to experience severe fire than timber lands — with a 57% probability of experiencing high-severity fire, compared to timber lands’ 66% — government forest managers aren’t necessarily doing a perfect job either, experts say.
While timber companies’ approaches tend to be too “hands-on” — bulldozing over the natural ecosystem (sometimes literally) — the U.S. Forest Service still tends to be too “hands-off,” experts argue: National Forests are still lagging behind on much-needed prescribed burning and mechanical thinning work (or “forest raking” as the president likes to call it).
Wildfire fighters, unmasked in toxic smoke, are getting sick and dying
The U.S. Forest Service has fought decades of efforts to better protect its crews — sending them into smoke without masks or warnings about the risks.
Between flames and the sky are America’s aerial firefighters
After decades as a wildland firefighter, Timothy Ingalsbee co-founded the nonprofit FUSEE, short for “Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology,” in 2004. Based in Eugene, Oregon, the organization is at the forefront of a shift in how wildfire is fought.
“We need to tell the whole story about fire — not just the sensationalist war-reporting stuff of acres burned, homes destroyed, firefighters killed,” Ingalsbee said. “We want to provide reporters with a wider context of policy, history, ecology and fire management.”
To Ingalsbee, the real issue is not that fire happens, but how we respond to it.