Lack of Federal Firefighters Hurts California Wildfire Response
14 July 2021
Published by https://www.pewtrusts.org/
USA – As fire season heats up in California, firefighter shortages in the state are getting worse.
Only half of U.S. Forest Service fire engines in the region are fully staffed and able to run seven days a week, according to the agency’s latest records. Back in April, internal agency documents anticipated that a third of the 273 engines would be understaffed. Twenty-eight of the agency’s engines now aren’t running at all.
Forest Service firefighters in the Golden State say all kinds of jobs are sitting open, from hand crew members to bulldozer operators, and that crews assigned to major fires are struggling to assemble teams.
California needs all the firefighters it can get as wildfires grow larger and more dangerous. Shortages of federal firefighters there also could hurt other states, as the federal government moves crews around the country when large fires break out. As of Tuesday, 67 large fires were burning in 12 states including California.
The Forest Service’s staffing woes particularly worry local leaders in areas where communities border federal land. “It’s incredibly concerning,” said Stacy Corless, a member of the Board of Supervisors in Mono County, California.
Corless lives in and represents the town of Mammoth Lakes, a vacation destination surrounded by the Inyo National Forest. She said she heard this spring that the forest was having trouble hiring but that it was eventually able to staff its engines.
Local fire departments in Mono County work closely with the Forest Service and local officials check in with the agency throughout fire season, she said, so they can keep their constituents informed.
“People start to see a smoke plume go up, and they get afraid,” Corless said. “They want to know what’s going on, is the Forest Service on it, are they going to put this fire out?”
Drought and record high temperatures have heightened fire risk across the West this year. More than 2 million acres have burned already, compared with about 1.6 million by this time last year.
Stateline Story May 20, 2021
California Lacks Federal Firefighters as Dangerous Season Looms
More than 142,000 acres have burned in California. In Northern California, fires that started on federal land have burned so close to communities in recent weeks that families have been ordered to evacuate.
Low pay, long deployments and a bureaucratic hiring process make it hard for federal agencies to fill jobs, say current and former federal wildland firefighters. They say that morale is low and many firefighters have been pushed to their limit by the stress of the job.
The Forest Service’s recruitment and retention problems in California are no secret, said David Alicea, the National Federation of Federal Employees Forest Service Council’s vice president for the California region. NFFE is the union that represents Forest Service employees.
