The Bear Fire ‘smoldered for weeks,’ then destroyed a town. Was Forest Service slow to fight it?
But earlier this year federal officials announced that because of the risk of COVID-19 to firefighting crews, the Forest Service would revert back to fighting every fire that ignited to try to keep them small, said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter who’s the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology. He said it didn’t matter. This year’s wildfire season left the Forest Service’s firefighting resources stretched so thin that they are having to “triage fires.” “There’s so much wildfire activity across the whole West Coast,” he said