Trump executive order would combine federal wildfire efforts during heat of Western fire season
“If President Trump was serious about improving the nation’s wildland firefighting capabilities, he would stop hollowing out the agencies tasked with fighting wildfires and prioritize the climate and weather science that firefighters need to analyze risk,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the advocacy group Center for Western Priorities, in a statement.
“This executive order is nothing more than a performative gesture that will cause chaos just as wildfire risk is ramping up in the West.”
Trump aims to consolidate federal firefighters into one agency
“The major danger of this proposal is that it will sever fire management from land management,” said Ingalsbee, who’s also the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, a nonprofit based in Eugene. “We’re just going to be locked into that reactive mode of emergency firefighting — divorced from any pre-fire mitigation, post-fire recovery or rehabilitation and community fire preparedness.”
California faces rough fire season as US Forest Service work becomes more politicized
Kelly Martin, a retired chief of fire and aviation at Yosemite National Park, said with shifting political winds, she expected the agency to take a very aggressive suppression stance this summer. “We know that the use of good fire on the landscape and the use of [managed] wildfire … is now taking a backseat to the suppression intent this summer.” But, she added, this shows a failure to learn from past mistakes.
“I think it sets us up for what basically becomes an untenable, unworkable situation this year because this is the same strategy that we’ve had for many, many decades,” Martin said. “Wildfires just keep getting bigger and bigger and more dangerous.”
As wildfire season approaches, Wyden, Budd, Schrier and Valadao unveil bipartisan legislation to reduce impacts of wildfires
“Senator Wyden’s National Prescribed Fire Act is a must-pass bill for the sake of our communities and forests. Prescribed fire is the safest, most effective, efficient, and economical tool for influencing future wildfire behavior. Ask any wildland firefighter and they will admit that they'd rather be lighting fires under the best of weather conditions than fighting fires under the worst conditions. Proactive prescribed burning beats reactive wildfire fighting any day!” said Timothy Ingalsbee, Executive Director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE).
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?
As fire burns north of Tucson, Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency. Ex-officials warn of chaos and major disruptions in the midst of fire season
President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to merge the government’s wildland firefighting efforts into a single agency, a move some former federal officials warn could increase the risk of catastrophic blazes and ultimately cost billions of dollars.
Trump’s budget would centralize firefighting efforts now split among five agencies and two Cabinet departments into a single Federal Wildland Fire Service under the U.S. Interior Department.
That would mean shifting thousands of personnel from the U.S. Forest Service — where most federal firefighters now work — into the new agency with fire season already underway. Budget documents do not disclose how much the change could cost or save.
Trumps plan to merge wildland firefighting efforts receives pushback
President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to merge the government’s wildland firefighting efforts into a single agency; a move some former federal officials warn could increase the risk of catastrophic blazes and ultimately cost billions of dollars.
US plan to merge fire agencies raises staffing and strategy concerns
Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology described the plan as disruptive to existing land management practices.
Ingalsbee said: “Cleaving the Forest Service’s firefighting duties from its role as a land manager would be like separating cojoined twins — it would basically kill the agency.”
Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency, but ex-officials warn of chaos
But organizations representing firefighters and former Forest Service officials say it would be costly to restructure firefighting efforts and cause major disruptions in the midst of fire season. Over the long term, they said, it would shift the focus from preventing fires through forest thinning and controlled burns, to extinguishing them even in cases where fire could have beneficial effects.
“You will not suppress your way to success in dealing with catastrophic fires. It’s going to create greater risk and it’s going to be particularly chaotic if you implement it going into fire season,” said Steve Ellis, the chairman of the forest service retirees group and a former wildfire incident commander.
Wildfire policy leaders slam Trump’s firefighting proposal
“Creating a separate fire management agency from land management agencies will sever the connection between fire management and land management,” Ingalsbee said. “It will lose that stewardship ethos, and it will just become a kind of municipal fire department in the woods.”
Idaho Gov. Little aims to ‘complement’ Trump order with this wildfire plan
Tim Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and the co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, told the Idaho Statesman that an overreliance on commercial logging would in fact exacerbate the risk of wildfires. He supports increasing the use of prescribed burns — along with strategically cutting back smaller trees and clearing out undergrowth — as a more effective form of mitigation.
As a wildland firefighter, “I worked hard as a young man to save those trees, to keep them standing,” Ingalsbee said. “If that’s their solution, why bother to fight fires at all?”
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.
The state’s controversial wildfire map may go. But the risk to communities won’t.
No matter where you live in Lane County, don’t discount your wildfire risk, said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the Eugene-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
“Once it enters the city, what begins is house to house ignition, kind of like a chain nuclear reaction,” Ingalsbee said. “So that’s why even in the center of Eugene, we’re still vulnerable.”
With much of Eugene and Springfield categorized as low hazard in the wildfire map, he worries the map has given people a “false sense of security” at a time when city resources are already stretched thin.
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.”
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.
White House pushed to move firefighting out of Forest Service
A draft executive order would revamp wildland firefighting, pursuing a new federal agency and mandating 30-minute response times in high-risk areas.
Logging doesn’t prevent wildfires, but Trump is trying it anyway
The Agriculture Department is opening more than 112 million acres of federal forests to logging in a misguided bid to prevent fires and boost timber production.