Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.”

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

‘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.”

Read More
Fire News, FUSEE in the News FUSEE Fire News, FUSEE in the News FUSEE

‘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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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?

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

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.”

Read More
Fire News FUSEE Fire News FUSEE

Trump considering plan to change how the country fights wildfires

Some firefighters say the attempt to put out all wildfires is both unrealistic and counterproductive. Fire is a natural part of the landscape, they say, and allowing lower-intensity burns in certain areas clears vegetation and prevents more catastrophic fires that rage through years of built-up fuel.

“Fire exclusion is the problem,” said Joe Stutler, who has 57 years of firefighting experience and serves as a commander for federal incident management teams. “We need more fire. We don’t need less fire on the landscape.”

Stutler also said it is unrealistic to think that firefighters could respond within 30 minutes to wildfires that often break out in remote wilderness areas. Such an expectation could lead to firefighters taking more dangerous risks, he said.

Read More