Solemn and Steadfast in the Year of Living Dangerously

Firefighting has inherent health and safety risks that seem to grow every year as climate change fuels more frequent bouts of red flag weather conditions and episodes of extreme fire behavior.  But this year the inherent dangers of firefighting have increased quantum fold with the addition of the coronavirus crisis. The most important thing that firefighters have to keep them safe and enable them to be effective--each other--has now become a threat with the highly contagious Covid-19 disease.

Symptomatic of the Trump Administration's complete lack of a uniform, science-based strategy for preventing the spread of Covid-19 on a national level, the fire services have been grappling with their own failure of leadership at the highest levels. A hodge-podge of policy proposals for health and safety protocols have been drafted by dozens of committees across the different federal land management agencies, without consensus among the USDA or DOI, or even agreement within a single agency across different regional units. Firefighters cannot be assured that traveling to a fire from one unit, region, or agency to another will have the same safety protocols--or even if these protocols will be effective in keeping them safe from the spread of disease.

Early reactions by agency leadership were a suspension of early season trainings, pack tests, and prescribed burns in order to maintain social distancing and buy some time to come up with a plan. But as wildfires and the virus are fast spreading across the Southwest and Great Basin regions, these have outpaced the efforts to devise a strategy and comprehensive plan for keeping firefighters safe while managing fire.

At the start of the 2020 western wildfire season federal agencies were already short in the number of returning seasonal firefighters and organized crews. In California the situation is extremely dire.  CalFire depends on an army of prisoners for their handcrews, but the spread of infection has wiped out whole crews before they've even hit the firelines. Between actual Covid illnesses and related quarantines, currently only one-third of inmate crews are available for dispatch. In a typical year all of CalFire's 150 inmate crews are out on the line, but with barely 40 crews available in early July, what is going to happen in October when SoCal's Santa Ana windstorm-wildfire season peaks?

It is near-inevitable that suppression resource shortages will require triage that leaves some wildfires unstaffed, and perhaps some communities undefended. Unfortunately, this triage system will be ad hoc, in-the-moment by the seat-of-the-pants in a state-of-emergency mentality rather than part of a carefully pre-planned strategy with a logic that is based on doing what is best for firefighters, communities, and the land.

Indeed, the nation's coronavirus crisis portends chaos in the fire services that will result in tragedy fires and urban fire disasters at best, complete system collapse at worst, as this wildfire season unfolds. That statement is not intended as hyperbolic alarmism--it is the current scuttlebutt among epidemiologists who are looking aghast at their models of potential infection spread through the ranks of firefighters. CalFire’s inmate crews are the canaries in the Covid mine.

Each infected crewmember places the rest of their crew under quarantine, and each close contact with other firefighters places restrictions on them and their crew's availability. Given the extremely contagious nature of this novel coronavirus, the ripple effect of infections and quarantines threatens a tidal wave of entire crews removed from availability at the very time they are needed most. That is assuming, of course, that firefighter health and safety is prioritized, and agency leaders do what is necessary to protect crews.

Given Donald Trump's willful ignorance and malevolent indifference to the risks of Covid-19 being borne by frontline workers—an attitude that is shared by numerous other government officials and citizens who comprise Trump's political base—there is not much assurance that firefighters' health and safety will be a priority. A good example of this cavalier attitude is this quote from a County Commissioner in Nevada:

"Firefighters are generally young and healthy, so their risk is probably really minimal. Of course, they can still carry (covid-19), but we don't want to lose sight of our mission to put out the fires by being too cautious about the virus."

Firefighters and other frontline workers and first-responders are essential, not expendable!

As a desperate reaction, agency leaders have decided to resurrect the 10:00am Policy in all but name, and have adopted a total suppression policy to fight every fire in order to avoid smoke impacting communities and increasing the spread of covid. But this simply shifts the health risks and impacts of smoke and disease onto firefighters. With an initial attack success rate that consistently hovers around 98%, the 2% of fires that grow into large fires during severe weather conditions are inevitable. No amount of extra money, resources, or willpower can compensate for the effects of climate change on wildfire activity. Moreover, wildfire smoke comes at us from beyond our borders where our 10:00am policy is meaningless. Case in point: the west coast is eating the smoke now from fires burning in Russian Siberia and northern Mexico.

Agency leaders must know that their reactionary total suppression policy is quotidian and doomed to fail. Quite likely is a matter of public posturing directed from the Secretary's offices and higher up in the Trump Administration. But how many firefighters must get sick or die to maintain this posture, fighting fire to put out smoke as part of a war on the virus? 

Tragically, a helicopter pilot died on the Polles Fire in Arizona yesterday. The predictable response is to mobilize a Type 1 Incident Management Team to take over the fire, and double down on efforts to extinguish the blaze that is burning in the Mazatzal Wilderness Area on the Tonto National Forest. The agency is investigating the cause of the crash, but in the meantime its Public Affairs Office has issued this statement:

"Firefighters, solemn at the loss of a respected member of the firefighting community, continue steadfast their efforts to suppress the Polles Fire in Mr. Boatman's honor."

Solemn and steadfast in suppression: is that going to be the credo for crews this year?

Question: why were hundreds of firefighters, including six hotshot crews, fighting a lightning-caused fire burning through sparse desert fuels in flat terrain in a designated wilderness area far away from the nearest town? Answer: because gutless or opportunistic leaders failed to stand up to Trump and counter his desperate ploys to pretend the virus is disappearing like magic, "life is back to normal" and "America is great again."

The agencies need a solid, science-based strategy that acknowledges both the reality of the coronavirus and climate-fueled wildfires, and limits firefighter exposure to the amplified health and safety risks of fighting fires this year.

Before we see more firefighters die, whole crews wiped out by disease, or just become exhausted and unhealthy by chasing after every single ignition, maybe we should consider holding suppression resources in reserve, being more selective and strategic in their dispatch, and deploying them on the fires that matter most to protecting people.

Perhaps this is the year to fundamentally shift the fire management paradigm and radically change our strategy in ways that integrate both firefighter safety and land safety. Instead of triaging fires based on a lack of available resources, let's proactively plan and prepare for the selective, strategic use of suppression resources where they are undeniably needed--nearest vulnerable homes and communities--while restricting their use where they are debatably not needed--deep inside remote wilderness areas and roadless wildlands.

The leadership vacuum that continues to deny the scope and severity of the combined coronavirus and climate crises must be filled by leaders from the ground-level and grassroots.  If firefighters cannot perform their assignments safely with a reasonable chance of success, they are obligated and will be righteous to refuse those assignments. They should not be bullied into aggressively suppressing a fire to give a false sense of security to the public or powers that be.

With or without a systemic collapse of our suppression-centric fire management culture, this year of living dangerously might ironically offer the best opportunity to shift the paradigm and manage fires wisely with the health and safety of both firefighters and the land foremost in mind.

Firefighters are essential, not expendable. Cowardly or incompetent leaders and their obsolescent policies are expendable, not essential.