We are running out of firefighters at a perilous time
In the era of climate change and forest mismanagement, it’s tempting to shrug one’s shoulders and presume that firefighter shortages are inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Unlike urban firefighters, wildland firefighters are specially trained to take on the wildfires that plague the West. For years, those employed by the federal government have complained about profound levels of attrition driven by poor pay, increasingly exhausting working conditions and a lack of mental-health support. And unless Congress gets it together, a government shutdown on Oct. 1 will cut their wages across the board.
Extreme heat means more wildfires. It’s taking a toll on firefighters.
Extreme heat increases the chances that firefighters can suffer heat exhaustion or heat stroke — which can be deadly.
And as wildland firefighters face longer seasons, they may also face additional health risks down the line.
‘Weather whiplash’ helped drive this year’s California wildfires
“Fire just is. Fire is inevitable,” said Bloemers. “The problem is the vulnerability of the communities that we’ve built in the fire plain, not the fire, because we aren’t going to eliminate the fire from a Western fire-prone, fire-adapted landscape. It is a natural reality.”
A study Bloemers co-authored emphasizes improving resilience in at-risk communities. Modifying structures and landscaping around communities can make them less likely to burn in a wildfire, and can reduce the potential for ignitions in conditions in which a fire could be difficult to control.
Oregon House Republicans target forests for wildfire reform as grass and shrubland burns
About 1,650 wildfires this season have burned a record of more than 1.5 million acres in Oregon. But about 75% were not in forests but across grass and shrubland in eastern Oregon, according to the Wildland Mapping Institute.
“It’s true that better forest management is one piece of the puzzle. At the same time, it’s vital to base wildfire strategies on careful thinking and good science. Broad-brushed claims that more commercial logging will reduce our risk don’t clear that bar,” Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, and chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire, said.
In the Park Fire, an Indigenous cultural fire practitioner sees beyond destruction
Where others might see only catastrophe, Don Hankins scans fire-singed landscapes for signs of renewal.
He identifies prohibitions on Indigenous cultural fires as some of the most destructive ecological policies in history for both Native cultures and the lands they traditionally stewarded. “Indigenous communities often recognize colonization as the beginning of the climate crisis,” Hankins wrote. “Spanish, Mexican, and American governments enacted policies enabling private ownership of land and forbidding Indigenous peoples from setting fires—often with extreme penalties (i.e., death).” A complex web of state and federal laws continues to severely limit cultural burning.
The wildfire risk in America’s front yards
A 10-year
from the Forest Service calls for removing much more of this combustible kindling, reducing flammable fuels on up to 50 million acres of land. But communities will continue burning if leaders don’t also find the money and political will to retrofit older homes, and rethink where and with what new homes are built. “We assume that we can place our house in an area of high risk, and that firefighters will come in and risk their own life to protect our home,” Barrett said. “You would never assume that level of home protection from any other hazard, particularly from earthquakes or floods or hurricanes.”
The electric grid is a wildfire hazard. It doesn’t have to be.
Shareholder pressure on electric utilities has prioritized profits over maintenance that can help reduce wildfire risk. This deferred maintenance over the decades means old frail utility poles are more likely to fall and outdated, weakened wires are more apt to snap during storms.
As millions of acres burn, firefighters say the U.S. Forest Service has left them with critical shortages
The agency recently said that it had reached 101% of its firefighter hiring goal for 2024, but those on the front lines say the agency is understating how badly depleted their ranks are, especially for experienced firefighters.
Watch how a father’s risky plan to save his house from the Park Fire paid off
As Amy and their 19- and 22 year-old sons wrangled the family pets and packed two cars with go-bags and supplies, Mike put into action a plan he had developed for just this situation: an extensive fire defense system he created to protect his home from a wildfire’s destructive blaze.
A wildfire is bearing down on a tiny town. And hardly anyone is leaving.
The Pioneer Fire started nearly two months ago and at that time it was 10 miles from Stehekin. Now it’s only a mile and a half away, after burning through more than 33,000 acres. A week ago, authorities issued a Level 3 evacuation order for the roughly 100 people who live in Stehekin, instructing them to “go now.” Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) urged residents to leave in a video message this week, saying that “their presence make it much more difficult for our firefighters to fight the fire.”
But Davis and many of his neighbors have chosen to stay, and some intend to fight the fire themselves.
A megafire overwhelmed even some of the best preparations. What’s next?
But there are already questions about whether it was enough. Zeke Lunder, a Chico resident and wildfire and fuels management expert, quickly pointed to an overgrowth of invasive thistle near the Park Fire ignition site that Chico could have reduced with a prescribed burn, as it recently had in other parts of Upper Bidwell Park.
Forest Service, environmentalists fight over how to save sequoias from wildfire
A battle is brewing between several groups over how best to protect giant sequoias from wildfires and climate change, even leading to a lawsuit.
The enormous flaw in wildfire data
The first publicized example of such wildfire expansion was the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Timothy Ingalsbee, PhD of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology estimated that a large proportion of the Biscuit Fire was ignited by Forest Service firing operations. Inglasbee stated in a 2006 report largely focused on the Biscuit Fire: “…burnout operations can sometimes take place several miles away from the edge of a wildfire, or alternately, miles away from the fire containment line.” Wildfire expansions have increased since 2002, and wildfire starts, such as lightning strike ignitions, are often simply the “match that lit the fire” leading to numerous firing operation ignitions to implement intentional burns that they call wildfires.
Why the Park Fire exploded so quickly
“What climate change is doing is just adding more energy into the system and amping up what’s there,” said Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor and fire historian at Arizona State University.
As wildfires rage, forecasters test new way to warn people near flames
Improved warnings are important but could also create a false sense of security among emergency responders, said Sarah McCaffrey, a retired research social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.“ Most of the fires that are deadly — they’re deadly because from the moment of ignition to when they affect a lot of people is a very short time period,” she said. “There can be an underlying assumption that time will be on the side of the people making the warnings.”
There is also no guarantee people will receive a warning, even if one is issued quickly.
Millions of Californians live near oil and gas wells that are in the path of wildfires
“Wildfires are increasingly burning in oil fields over the past four decades, and it’s a trend that’s very likely to continue throughout the rest of the century, including near some densely populated parts of California,” González said.
The researchers also found that exposure to oil wells in the path of wildfires was unevenly distributed. Black, Latino and Native American people faced disproportionate risk.
Will the Northwest Forest Plan finally respect tribal rights?
Ryan Reed (Karuk, Hupa, Yurok), an Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter and the youngest advisory committee member, said he pushed the committee to start to address the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities, citing the impacts of the agency’s long suppression of cultural fire:
“If we’re able to empower Indigenous people, we’re also going to empower the various communities that are directly impacted by fire and have limited access to traditional foods or cultural practices.”
“We’re all feeling the negative impacts of fire suppression,” said committee member Ryan Reed.
Artificial intelligence can be our first line of defense in limiting the effects of wildfires
“The AI platform is a new tool in the toolbox and allows data to drive firefighting decisions, which saves lives, protects habitats, and infrastructure. In its first season, the AI platform was utilized in all 21 CAL FIRE Dispatch Centers and detected over 1,200 fires across California, beating 911 call reporting over 30% of the time.”
By burning down buildings, insurers want to change how they’re built
The message to homebuilders is stark: Homes in certain parts of the United States must now be constructed with wildfires in mind, or they most likely will not be insured, which would mean they couldn’t be bought with a mortgage.
Heavy gear, unforgiving terrain, backbreaking work. Now firefighters contend with extreme heat too
The conditions also illustrate the increasing prudence of managing some backcountry fires for ecological benefit, treating them more like controlled burns rather than trying to immediately suppress them, Duncan said. That benefits the environment, and it protects the physical health of firefighters by permitting them to focus on fires threatening people or structures, she said. The idea remains politically unpopular, she noted.
It will also be increasingly key to set more controlled fires in the spring and fall to reduce the amount of fuel on the ground come summer, Ingalsbee said. “Big picture, we’re going to have to be proactively managing fire during the cooler period of the year, rather than attacking all fires at the hottest period of the year, when we fail, and we surpass human physical ability for working in these kinds of conditions,” he said.