Senators introduce overtime pay raise bill as fiscal cliff nears

Congress temporarily averted a wildland firefighter pay cliff when it narrowly stopped a government shutdown at the end of September. As that stop-gap nears its expiration on November 17, senators are making new pushes to increase wildland firefighter pay.

Nevada Senators Jacky Rosen and Cortez Masto introduced the “Wildland Firefighter Fair Pay Act,” which would permanently raise firefighter pay caps. The legislation, if passed, would also expand eligible employment to NWS meteorologists deployed with firefighters and would require a report from the USDA and DOI and NWS on necessary staffing levels of wildland firefighters and meteorologists.

The senators had previously written a letter to legislators urging them to include a permanent salary increase for wildland firefighters in the government funding bill.

“Nevada’s wildland firefighters are heroes who keep our communities safe,” Rosen said. “We must provide them with the pay they deserve, and I’m glad to help introduce this bipartisan legislation to permanently increase their overtime pay caps.”

The bill isn’t the only piece of legislation trying to improve  conditions for wildland firefighters. The Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act (WFPPA) would authorize premium pay for federal firefighters portal-to-portal whenever they respond to an incident. The act was introduced to Congress before the shutdown was temporarily averted, but was never voted on.

There were 11,187 wildland firefighters (of GS-9 and below) employed through the USFS as of July 25, the according to the agency website. Funding proposed for the next fiscal year would reportedly support the hiring of 970 more firefighter positions, but Congress has yet to make that budget a reality.

If neither bill is approved by November 17, when the government shutdown stopgap is set to expire, wildland firefighter pay will be reduced by either 50 percent of current salary or by $20,000 annually, whichever is lower. It’s expected that the reduction could lead to a third of wildland firefighters walking off the job, according to the employee union and others.

 

Satellite views of Canada’s largest 2023 fires

Over 18 million hectares (more than 44 million acres, roughly the size of North Dakota), were burned during Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season this year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). Canada usually sees only 2.5 million hectares burn annually. Although the number of fires that burned this year isn’t unusual — 6,595 as of October — many of the fires that did burn spread to “megafire” status.

Newly released NASA satellite imagery shows the day-by-day expansion of some of these megafires. The year’s second-largest fire burned 1,224,938 hectares (4,730 square miles) southeast of Sakami in Quebec; it was fully contained in late July.

NASA satellite imagery also shows the spread of four wildfires in and south of the Northwest Territories. The western-most fire, burning near Fort Nelson, stopped spreading in August after burning 802,575 hectares. It then was reignited by winds in late September and early October and spread to 1,294,096 hectares, becoming the state’s largest wildfire as of November 4. The animation details the fire’s first spread.

Scientists tracked the fires with the new “Fire Events Data Suite” (FEDS), which draws on data from a group of satellites called VIIRS. “The thing that really sets FEDS apart is that the system excels at tracking the daily, incremental spread of fires at 12-hour intervals,” said Yang Chen, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Irvine. “That makes near real-time monitoring possible and allows us to generate much more detailed views of fire progression than we have been able to do in the past.”

The new system will reportedly help fire crews pinpoint the parts of a fire perimeter that are actively burning and identify residual heat from the fire that may pose a hazard to wildland firefighters.

PacifiCorp now wants protection from fire victims

Oregon’s second-largest electricity provider wants state regulators to protect it from the costs of future lawsuits seeking reimbursement from destructive wildfires.

The Oregonian reported that PacifiCorp’s request to the Public Utility Commission (PUC) was made just months after the utility lost a massive lawsuit in Multnomah County over its negligence in Oregon’s catastrophic Labor Day fires of 2020. More lawsuits are still pending with plaintiffs seeking billions of dollars in damages. In June after the trial, the company wanted ratepayers to pay for $90 million a jury found PacifiCorp liable for, after it had started numerous fires and burned miles of forest and thousands of homes in the 2020 fires. (The final verdict [PDF] in the PacifiCorp trial is posted on our DOCUMENTS page.) The jury in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland found PacifiCorp  — which owns Pacific Power — liable for four of the devastating Labor Day 2020 fires that burned about 2,500 properties in western Oregon.

One of the 2020 fires overran the ICP.

PacifiCorp’s new request drew harsh criticism from wildfire victims, lawyers, and ratepayer advocates, who questioned the company’s motives and the proposal’s legality. The financial protections PacifiCorp is seeking, in addition to assuming that future fires will be started by the utility company, would “only apply prospectively,” the company told state regulators. Simon Gutierrez with PacifiCorp said the request would have no impact on ongoing litigation.

PacifiCorp has already asked state regulators to let it pass the cost of damages it owes for wildfires in 2020 on to its customers.

2020 Labor Day fires in western Oregon
09/13/2020 — the Labor Day fires were among the worst natural disasters in Oregon’s history. They killed nine people, burned more than 1,875 square miles (4,856 square kilometers) and destroyed upwards of 5,000 homes and other structures.

A report by OPB back in June said that PacifiCorp had asked the PUC to allow the utility to defer the wildfire liability costs  through June 2024, which would give the company the option to add those costs to customers’ rates in the future.

“The deferred accounting application enables Pacific Power to preserve its ability to seek recovery in the future in the event the outcome could impact the financial stability of the company, which would result in higher costs to customers,” said the PacifiCorp attorneys.

A class action lawsuit is still ongoing; jurors found that PacifiCorp could be liable for punitive damages to thousands of Oregonians who lost property in the Echo Mountain Complex and the Santiam Canyon, South Obenchain, and 242 fires. The company estimates those costs could total billions of dollars.

PacifiCorp has now asked the Oregon PUC to limit future lawsuit awards  to “actual” damages for property and loss of life. As a condition of receiving electric service, customers would have to waive their right to other damages (such as non-economic and punitive awards by juries), like the awards that the county jury stung the utility with in June after it found Pacific Power’s  conduct was grossly negligent, reckless, and willful.

courtroom exhibit in the PacifiCorp trial

The utility filed the same request in Washington, California, Idaho, and Wyoming — where it also provides power. PacifiCorp says limiting damages from wildfire lawsuits would protect customers from higher costs.

Meanwhile, PacifiCorp is one of three energy suppliers receiving $450 million in funds from the federal government. OPB reported that two Oregon utilities and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs together will receive nearly $450 million from the federal government to modernize the region’s power grid and incorporate more renewable energy. The investment will allow PacifiCorp, Portland General Electric, and the tribe to boost transmission capacity and job training and fortify the electric grid from the dangers of wildfires.

2020 Beachie Creek Fire

PacifiCorp will match the federal funds allocated for its projects, according to Rohit Nair, the company’s director of engineering standards and grid modernization.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure significant federal funding for programs that support our customers,” he said, “especially those in historically underrepresented and marginalized communities.” The funding is part of a total $3.5 billion the Biden administration announced in mid-October for states to upgrade their electric grids to make them more resilient to climate disasters and to support clean energy development.

2020 Beachie Creek Fire

But while PacifiCorp moves forward with upgrading its infrastructure, it’s also asking the PUC to protect it from future lawsuits after utility-caused wildfires.

“This proposal is grossly beyond the pale,” said Sam Drevo, one of 17 named plaintiffs who were collectively awarded $90 million in economic, non-economic, and punitive damages in back in June. “As a wildfire victim who lost everything in fires that were caused by PacifiCorp’s equipment, non-economic and punitive damages are the only punishment available in the legal system to stop negligent behavior from happening again,” he said. “I am shocked by this disgusting proposal and hope it falls flat with the PUC.”

Lee Beyer, a longtime Oregon legislator and former PUC chair, said PacifiCorp’s assertion that the request would benefit ratepayers is questionable. He believes it’s unlikely the commission would allow PacifiCorp to pass the legal costs on to customers.

“Any costs coming out of a court case are generally the responsibility of the utility and its shareholders,” Beyer said.

Bob Jenks, executive director of the ratepayer advocacy group Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, questioned whether the PUC even has the legal authority to grant PacifiCorp’s request. Asking ratepayers to waive their legal remedies as a condition of accepting service from a local monopoly is pretty extreme, he said. “It’s incredibly broad and raises a number of fundamental legal questions.”

ONLY YOU — and all your friends — can fight forest fires!

“All open federal firefighting jobs are posted at usajobs.gov and  applications must be submitted online. At USAJobs, you can search for these positions using the terms ‘forestry technician’ or ‘wildland firefighter.’ The search will return all firefighting positions open for application within both the Department of the Interior and the Agriculture Department.”

The National Interagency Fire Center (nifc.gov) has this and more information online, and the Forest Service has many inspirational videos online explaining the benefits of a “career” as a firefighter.

“The majority of firefighter positions are seasonal in nature,” according to NIFC, “with a typical season lasting from May to September or October. If you are interested in one of these positions, you will need to begin looking and applying for these jobs several months prior, typically in November through early January, as the hiring process can be lengthy.”

NIFC jobs promo

What the people at NIFC don’t tell you is why the applicant numbers have fallen off this year — again — badly enough that some hotshot crews may not be able to send out a full crew, some engines are unstaffed, and IMTs are having trouble filling positions and are even considering combining T1 with T2 positions to make up a fully staffed team.

USFS hiring officials say that only about 6,000 applications were  submitted for fire positions and close to 11,000 applications for non-fire positions — before any sort of qualification check is run on the applicants.  Announcements for temp seasonal positions have been extended to November 13; they were set to close November 8, but the agency has had very low numbers on all announcements nationwide. High school students who are currently 17 but will be 18 by the start dates next spring are encouraged to apply, and numbers of applicants for Forest Service jobs now are so low that chances of a hire are pretty good.

sample federal firefighter jobs currently open
A random sample of federal firefighter jobs currently open

Most of the current openings are for temporary low-pay seasonal jobs. AND — new this year — seasonals will be drug tested. Used to be just permanent hires were, and this new barrier to employment probably has nothing to do with the falling numbers of applicants and other recruitment difficulties. In the table above, most of those with no wage listed are paid on an annual salary basis or are permanent jobs. New applicants with no experience who are willing to move anywhere and really rough it can probably get on this year.

And really rough it might mean living in your car or your own tent dozens of miles from the nearest “town” which is dozens of miles from a real town. They say that doing without the basics will build character, but it can also build issues with your physical and mental health.

Then there’s pay — or the lack of it. Fast-food workers in California are now paid a minimum of $20 an hour. The U.S. sent over $3.3 billion in foreign assistance to Israel in 2022, and $1.4 billion to Afghanistan, but starting jobs for federal firefighters in the U.S.  still pay about 16 bucks, and far too many of those firefighters can’t afford even basic housing.

This is by no means a new issue. Nearly three years ago in the spring of 2021, Bill Gabbert wrote that hundreds of permanent firefighting positions were vacant — just in California. The agency’s difficulties back then in recruiting and hiring seasonal and permanent firefighters meant that multiple hotshot crews did not qualify to respond to a fire with 18 personnel — the minimum required by interagency standards.

“More than a dozen FS fire engines in the state are completely unstaffed,” he wrote, “or instead of seven days a week coverage they have cut back to only five. Thirty modules of FS hand crews, dozers, or water tenders in California have been shut down due to a shortage of employees.” He said then that the gaps in staffing were caused by two main factors — difficulty in hiring new personnel, and loss of experienced firefighters leaving the agency for better pay and working conditions elsewhere. 

From a report released May 13, 2021 by the Incident Workforce Development Group (IWDG):

Today, critical challenges in rostering and managing IMTs is leading to a decrease in the number of teams available for an increasing number of complex incidents.

In the past five years there have been multiple occasions where all available IMTs have been assigned to large fires. Local units have had to face the consequences of managing a complex incident without the services of an IMT.

The situation now has certainly not improved since 2021; fire season is not likely to somehow get cooler and shorter in 2024 and there’s not likely to be a big pay raise either.

For 2022 the IWDG reported that we had just over 3,500 IMT members, with 1,140 of them classed as Command & General Staff.

IMT Command & General staff by position and employment type
IMT Command & General staff by position and employment type

The real eye-opener is team membership by agency. Unless other federal and state agencies are going to greatly boost their personnel numbers on the federal incident management teams, the drops in USFS hires may put a serious pinch on the numbers (and qualifications) of those teams.

IMT membership by agency
U.S. Forest Service employees make up just about half of all the members of incident management teams, with the BLM and state and local government employees combined not even close to that.

State and local government employees account for not quite 25 percent of IMT members, and AD hires account for about 17 percent.

A diminished capacity in fielding and assigning IMTs for megafires (and/or those that threaten major clusters of residential areas, e.g. the 2018 Camp Fire or the 2020 Labor Day fires) will mean that the burden will fall more on local and state resources for management of those fires, which in many cases will mean larger fires and larger safety risks for crews, aircraft, and other resources — not to mention local residents.

Growing bananas can lower fire intensity in urban areas

Reducing fuels, increasing wildland firefighter resources, and building more firebreaks are all techniques used in tandem to reduce wildfire risk. Still, they often come with high up-front prices and uncertain long-term payoffs. A new study claims to have found a new mitigation strategy that sidesteps both issues: growing and maintaining banana trees with recycled water.

Some regions have considered building physical buffers out of concrete or metal to reduce fire risk, but those have high installation costs, require annual maintenance, and provide no additional revenue or benefits. So this study’s researchers focused on potential “edible fire buffers,” or specific vegetation that could be grown in wildfire-prone areas that would also produce a crop — and help add to the area’s economy.

To find the best candidate, the team modeled edible fire buffers by examining how the conditions of a historic fire would have changed if the crop had been present. The study used specifically the 2017 Tubbs Fire, since it fit the requirements of burning in a semi-arid region, originated in wildland, was spread by high winds, and then caused significant loss of life and property. The fire burned three California counties in October and was at the time the most destructive fire in the state. The research team used satellite, census, and fuel-type data from Santa Rosa at the time of the fire.

The study found that bananas were the most viable crop among its choices after testing multiple other possibilities. Vineyards, the most common high-value crop in Mediterranean climates, were too flammable to be considered viable for the study. Ginger is a low-flammability crop, but requires mechanical harvesting that could eat into potential revenue. Carob trees are low-flammability, high-yield, and high-value — but are better suited for areas where irrigation is unavailable or too costly.

The banana trees’ high water content, minimal management needs, and suitability for semi-arid and Mediterranean locations such as like California, Mexico, Chile, Australia, and South Africa drove researchers to and in-depth study the crop’s suitability.

“A medium-sized (633 m) banana buffer decreases fireline intensity by 96 percent, similar to the combination of prescribed burns and mechanical thinning, and delays the fire by 316 min, enabling safer and more effective firefighting,” the study said. “We also find that banana buffers with average yield could produce a profit of $56k USD/hectare through fruit sales, in addition to fire mitigation.”

The study found that not only would banana trees mitigate fire under current conditions, but the the trees would still have a protective effect as fires worsen and the climate changes.

Here is the full study:Edible fire buffers study

Officials declare emergency in North Carolina, big fire in Virginia

Officials have declared a state of emergency in a western North Carolina community where a wildfire has burned hundreds of acres and is threatening dozens of homes. It was estimated at 5 percent containment this afternoon.

According to the North Carolina Forest Service there was  one home damaged and two homes destroyed, along with one outbuilding and one uninhabited cabin; wyff4.com reported that the cause of the Poplar Drive Fire is  under  investigation. There have been no reported injuries.

The 431-acre fire in Henderson County threatens at least 75 other threatened structures; North Carolina Forest Service is focusing on putting in firelines.

CBS-19 out of Charlottesville reported that crews are also  fighting several separate fires in forested areas of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky as wide swaths of those states face moderate to severe drought conditions and warmer-than-normal temperatures.

Several counties in western North Carolina are currently in a severe drought, with wildfire activity increasing in the dry conditions. The North Carolina Forest Service issued a burn ban Sunday for 14 counties in the western part of the state because of hazardous conditions and said the ban  would stay in effect until further notice.

Q code: aim your camera here.Meanwhile, the Virginia Department of Forestry and the National Park Service are managing the 2800-acre Quaker Run Fire under unified command with Madison County Emergency Management. Their goals this afternoon included keeping the fire east of Rapidan Road and prepping both Rapidan Camp and Camp Hoover. Another priority is protecting power poles in the fire area.  Resources include Type 3 and Type 1 helicopters, and listed hazards included rolling rocks and continued falling snags.

Shenandoah National Park fire
Quaker Run Fire 11/06/2023 — NPS map by Justin Shedd

Park officials cautioned that visitors will encounter smoke in some areas; the fire is  burning on private, public, and park land on the eastern boundary near Whiteoak and Old Rag. The Quaker Run Fire includes about 670 acres within the Shenandoah National Park boundary. Updates on the air quality status is available online through the Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program. Updates are published daily by 8:00 a.m.

The powerline that supplies the Big Meadows area has been de-energized for firefighter safety. Big Meadows Wayside, the visitor center, and the campground are open and using generators. Some visitor amenities may be limited, and Big Meadows Lodge is closed for the season.

Virginia fire
Helicopters offer a good vantage point for monitoring the fire’s progression, especially in steep, mountainous terrain.  Virginia DOF photo

Fire weather forecast: High pressure is overhead but should slide offshore late Monday. Gusty south winds should return as the warm front lifts into the region. Gusts of 20-30 mph are possible at the fire location, and winds will be even higher on the ridges through Tuesday evening. Minimum humidities will remain around 35-40 percent across the Shenandoah Valley, with a predicted 40-45 percent east of the Blue Ridge. By Tuesday, these values are expected to improve as moisture builds back into the region.

Smoke is heaviest in the communities of Syria and Madison, which are closest to the fire, and in the central portion of the Park near Big Meadows, Whiteoak, and Old Rag. Smoke typically settles into low-lying areas in the evening and overnight, remains heavy in those areas in the morning, then lifts out in early afternoon. Smoke at Big Meadows is usually most noticeable in early afternoon as it is lifting or in the evening when smoke begins to settle. Hikers are encouraged to avoid the central part of the park.

 ~ Thanks and a tip of the hardhat to Matt and Cary.