Fighting wildfires is hellish work. It’s even worse under Trump
Trump administration’s climate denial is now colliding with its quest to shrink and incapacitate the federal workforce. Federal firefighters—spread across government land management agencies—are on the front lines of both crises, facing dire staffing shortages and bureaucratic chaos on top of shockingly meager pay, benefits, and protections.
Study: Prescribed burns substantially reduce wildfire severity, smoke
Prescribed burns are widely recognized as an effective wildfire mitigation tool. Now, using satellite imagery, land management records and fire emissions data, a team of researchers has put hard numbers to those impacts. During the 2020 season, fires that burned over recent prescribed fire areas were 16 percent less intense and emitted 220 fewer pounds of smoke per acre.
Unified wildfire service plan stalls after Congress demands answers
“Wildfire management is more than extinguishing fires,” the letter stated. “The critical linkage between fire suppression and forest management, including fuels reduction and prescribed fire, must be maintained. Severing forest management and forest managers from fire suppression will make firefighting less safe and put communities at greater risk.”
After Grand Canyon fire, forest experts say managed burns still needed
Pyne said it’s unfortunate that managed fires only make news when they get out of control and destroy large tracts or someplace special to people. He pointed to two controlled burns near Payson and Pine, Arizona, that achieved their desired effects without fanfare earlier this year.
Pyne likewise welcomed an investigation. He just hopes it won’t lead to an “all-suppression” fire management regime.
We Are Living in the Age of Fire. And It’s Only Going To Get Worse
“Fire is always where people are,” Flannigan continues. “It goes with us wherever we go. But the genie is out of the bottle. Fire is now uncontrollable, and we're going to see more and more fire and more and more catastrophic fire.”
Flannigan thinks we are living in the pyrocene, the age of fire, an idea from Arizona environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne. By burning so much coal and oil, we have changed the climate and can no longer control the processes.
2 Firefighters Killed in Idaho Sniper Ambush
Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned. Officials later found the body of a male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone, but they did not release any information about his identity or motives.
“This was a total ambush,” Sheriff Norris said. “These firefighters did not have a chance.”
Suspect identified in firefighter ambush that left 2 dead and 1 injured in Idaho
Authorities have confirmed the identity of the suspect in the firefighter ambush as 20-year-old Wess Roley, according to a law enforcement official.
Investigators believe the suspect intentionally set a brush fire on Canfield Mountain on Sunday before opening fire on responding firefighters, killing two and injuring a third.
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Santa Fe National Forest to manage lightning-caused 176-acre Laguna Wildfire in Coyote Ranger District
“We manage fire-adapted landscapes, and the Laguna Wildfire is an opportunity to create a resilient ecosystem that reduces the future risk of catastrophic severe wildfire to communities,” stated Anthony Madrid, SFNF Deputy Forest Supervisor.
‘Like taking Smokey Bear away from the Forest Service’: Trump Administration proposes consolidating wildland firefighting into single agency
“Wildfire management is more than extinguishing fires,” National Association of Forest Service Retirees Chair Steve Ellis wrote in the letter. “The critical linkage between fire suppression and forest management, including fuels reduction and prescribed fire, must be maintained. Severing forest management and forest managers from fire suppression will make firefighting less safe and put communities at greater risk.”
‘It’s unbelievable’: How Trump’s cuts could weaken wildfire prevention
The Trump administration is “doubling down on a failed approach,” said Dave Calkin, who served 25 years in the U.S. Forest Service before leaving in April through the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program. He said the administration’s executive order is a “return to a war on fire” that prioritizes ad hoc responses over investing in the personnel, planning and strategy to prevent blazes before they begin.
The Forest Service said no wildland firefighters were removed from their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s workforce reductions, and full-time wildland firefighters were exempted from the DRP. But about 1,400 employees with “red cards” — or those who are qualified wildland firefighters despite it not being their main job title — voluntarily left the Forest Service in the past few months by opting into the DRP.
The agency is now attempting to recall those 1,400 employees as wildfire season ramps up across the country.
Trump tells Forest Service, Interior to merge wildfire management programs. Trump has ordered a consolidation of the government’s wildland firefighting programs. But with wildfire season already underway, some feds worry about impacts.
Trump to merge wildland firefighting forces, despite warning of chaos
The order makes no mention of climate change, which Trump has downplayed even as global heating helps stoke bigger and more destructive wildfires that churn out huge amounts of harmful pollution.
Organizations representing firefighters and former forest service officials say it would be costly to restructure firefighting efforts and cause major disruptions in the middle of fire season.
Fighting ‘fire with fire’ grows in Eugene, Springfield
“We’ve excluded fire from ecology at our own detriment,” said Scott Polhamus, board president of the Willamette Ignition Network, an organization dedicated to training that supports responsibly prescribed and wildfire burns.
Getting fire back on the landscape has been a challenge in a society that has grown wary of fire, fearing it could escape and become something worse. (Such escapes involve less than 1% of prescribed burns each year, according to the U.S. Forest Service.)
As a solution, the Willamette Ignition Network offers a course catalog that resembles something you’d find at a college. It starts with basic firefighter training and builds up to advanced classes covering the science of fire ecology, including how fuels, weather, and topography interact. All of it is guided by federally mandated standards set by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.
Forest Service chief calls for fires to be extinguished ASAP. Fire scientists have concerns
Decades of aggressive suppression have led to dramatic changes in ecosystems across the West, and allowed for the buildup of trees, shrubs and other wildfire fuel. The Forest Service itself acknowledges that “rigorous fire suppression” has contributed to what it calls a “full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”
The future of fighting and preventing forest fires
Forest fires have always been a normal part of our landscape – and a tool used by human civilizations for millennia. But as climate change makes our landscapes hotter and drier, wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive. Fire consumed 8.9 million acres across the U.S. last year. The LA County fires this January are the costliest so far, with some estimates putting the total close to $250 billion in damages. How can we better adapt to living with these massive fires? And how should we think about fighting – and preventing – them?
Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding − this could be a rough year
Some of the Forest Service staff who were fired or put in limbo by the Trump administration are those who do research or collect and communicate critical data about forests and fire risk. Other fired staff provided support so crews could clear flammable debris and carry out fuel treatments such as prescribed burns, thinning forests and building fire breaks.
Losing people in these roles is like firing all primary care doctors and leaving only EMTs. Both are clearly needed. As many people know from emergency room bills, preventing emergencies is less costly than dealing with the damage later.
Trump Laid Off Nearly All the Federal Workers Who Investigate Firefighter Deaths
The federal firefighting force faces a daunting year, with spending cuts canceling prescribed burns to reduce flammable vegetation and the termination of hundreds of firefighting support staff, even in the face of climate-change-lengthened wildfire seasons.
“At a time when we need to be bolstering these efforts and personnel, it’s pretty damn appalling that we’d be trying to diminish the health benefits for our firefighters and first responders,” a Forest Service firefighter said.
Draft national wildfire plan under white house consideration returns firefighting ‘to the 1930s,’ experts say
“They’re proposing we’re going to go toe-to-toe with these fires,” said Jerry Williams, retired Forest Service national director of fire and aviation. “So instead of more thinning and prescribed burning, we’re going to try to be suppression-centric. That’s going to go back to the 1930s ‘10 a.m. policy.’”
To save our trees, we must burn down our forests
The best way to save the oak, and the countless critters that rely on it, is to return fire to our landscape. This might seem counterintuitive when wildfires, particularly in the West, spin more out of control each season. But for the sake of nature, we need more fire rather than less. Actually, if the goal is to reduce the danger of wildfires, we also need more fire rather than less.
Draft Trump order could endanger firefighters by changing needed aircraft requirements, Washington state officials warn
“This EO has the potential to shift responsibility for fires to private entities more interested in their corporate bottom line than the lives of the people wildfire impacts…” Rodruck said. “…The last thing we should do is make wildland fire fighting less safe, but that’s exactly what this order, as it is written currently, will do.”