Firefighting resources are ‘critically low’ in record fire year

This resource strain follows roughly 3,400 firings at the Forest Service under the Trump administration’s workforce cuts. Officials say frontline firefighters were spared, but the incident management teams coordinating the response were not. “These require the most seasoned and experienced managers. And we lost a lot of them last year,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, Executive Director for Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. “We are just now seeing the impact of that.”