In a 2024 paper, she and her coauthors argued that it is rapid fire growth that matters most when it comes to risks to homes and neighborhoods.

“The modern era of megafires is often defined based on wildfire size, but it should be defined based on how fast fires grow and their consequent societal impacts,” the October 2024 Science publication opens. “Speed fundamentally dictates the deadly and destructive impact of megafires, rendering the prevailing paradigm that defines them by size inadequate.”

Over time, he noticed how inconsistent the directives were. One day, his crew might be told to clean up everything 10 feet into a burned area; another day, 100. Sometimes the supervisors sent them back to the same patch again and again, stirring up more ash. “It was like, ‘We’ve been here five times — there’s nothing left,’” he said.

He figured these were at least safer assignments, farther from flames. In fact, mop-up is among the most carcinogenic work on a fire.

“The reality is that they are being exposed to stuff that puts them at greater risk to save us,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who sponsored the bill alongside Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota.

The legislation, which passed as part of a larger military spending bill, requires that some 20 smoke-related cancers be automatically treated as line-of-duty injuries or deaths. The aid includes a one-time tax-free payment of $448,575 and four years of financial support for the firefighter’s children or spouse to pursue higher education. Families who have lost loved ones within the last six years will be eligible to file for benefits retroactively.

Border patrol arrested José Bertin Cruz-Estrada while he was battling a wildfire in Washington. He is now in Mexico, separated from his family in Oregon

Wildfire fighters nationwide are getting sick and dying at young ages, The New York Times has reported. The federal government acknowledges that the job is linked to lung disease, heart damage and more than a dozen kinds of cancer.

But the U.S. Forest Service, which employs thousands of firefighters, has for decades ignored recommendations from its own scientists to monitor the conditions at the fire line and limit shifts when the air becomes unsafe.

Terry Fairbanks, executive director of Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative, said Forest Service payments have been held up but are eventually being processed. "Delays, definitely. But a total stone wall — no," she said.

Dustin Rymph, coordinator with the Southern Willamette Forest Collaborative, said contractors are currently doing fuels reduction work in the area. Pile burning, although briefly delayed, is also moving forward.

"There definitely was some lost momentum during a really important burn window," Rymph.

Fire is a natural and beneficial part of many ecosystems. But climate change can make fire seasons longer, hotter and drier. On top of that, humans have been artificially suppressing wildfire for decades, which creates more fuel for fires, and moving deeper into fire-prone areas.

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.

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.

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. 

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.