A document is floating around on Reddit indicating that the Washington Office of the US Forest Service wants to add five firefighters to Interagency Hotshot Crews (IHC) to bring the size up to 25.
The memo dated November 9, 2021 said the Agency has been investing in the modernization and standardization of national aviation resources for the past 10 years, but it is now time to shift focus to ground-based suppression resources, beginning with Type 1 hand crews, IHCs. With the growing length of the wildfire season, the memo says, “our wildland fire system was not built to sustain this level of response activity and stretching our outdated model to meet the increasing demand for response is having a detrimental impact on our employees, on their physical and mental health, their opportunities for rest and recovery, and their work-life balance.”
The new structure will have two GS-6 Lead Firefighter positions on the crews, creating a continuous career ladder from the GS-4 temporary firefighter to the GS-9 permanent full time superintendent. Another goal is to create a longer period of crew availability for these critical resources, and provide opportunities for mandatory stand-down periods and other controls to establish more deliberate work-rest ratios.
The memo recognizes that not all crews have the infrastructure to support 25 people per crew, so the minimum number will remain at 20 for those who can’t increase to to 25.
A copy of the November 9 USFS memo as seen on Reddit is below.
[pdf-embedder url=”https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/IHC-increase.pdf” title=”Interagency Hotshot Crew increase 25″]
Another alternative to the the 25-person crew is the 30-person, 3-module crew advocated in an article by Tim Swedberg we published October 20.
Tim wrote:
Rather than dispatch all 3 modules, only 2 modules would respond. This leaves a 10-person module at home for a week of quality rest exclusive of travel. After 7 days the module left at home would replace one of the modules on the fire and one of the modules on the fire would return home for a week. This weekly rotation would continue throughout the fire season and could be accomplished without exceeding the 14-day assignment standard as no crewmember would work beyond 14 days. The rotation provides certainty for families that once every three weeks the firefighter will be working at their home unit.
In September of 2020, the first year of the pandemic, Area Command Team 2 led by Tim Sexton was assigned to the Southern California Operations Center in mid-September to assist with strategic planning for the rest of the fire year. They put together a wealth of information about resource availability, including the chart below showing how the number of available IHCs that year dropped from 113 to about 30 by late October, and to about a dozen by mid-November.
One reason for the shortage of firefighting resources reported on fires this year was the large number of vacant positions. Many hand crews and engines were not able to respond because they could not hire people for the jobs, and many left for better pay and working conditions in state, county, municipal, or private organizations. It remains to be seen if the $3.3 billion appropriated in the bipartisan infrastructure bill last week for wildland fire will help turn around the hiring and retention problems.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom.
Given that you’ve just increased the Supt’s personnel by 50% will they now be given GS 11’s and the Captains GS’9’s? It’s insanity that a Shot Supt is only a GS9 with as many people as they supervise in a life threatening environment. IMO they should be GS 13’s, minimum. RO’s are full of GS12 non-supervisory “copy machine coordinator” positions. Give the Shots their due and proper!
25 on a shot crew is ideal, converting a crew to mostly full time is a bad idea, the crew needs their down time to lick their wounds, most if not all are dealing with some level of PT Stress, speaking as an old retired shot supt. If the feds want to get Billions of fuels projects completed they are going to have to hire a workforce dedicated to project work.
Some folks do not want to work anymore, I think there should be a study done to determine why working in the great out of doors is not attracting more folks.
What a mess, a stinking mess……….3.5 bil will not fix this….
Why go outdoors when you can thumb your way through life texting and working a keyboard become a manager of peeps elsewhere and tell the burger flippers, tool swingers, Pulaski drivers, engine pukes, helislackers, and hell lets include the pilots cuz I have heard youngsters say how easy it is to be a pilot til one has to face large numbers of hours to be hired. Yeah, why work? Why travel and be the equivalent of a migrant worker, a GI, etc….I think many here have explained the ups n downs of the FIRE life…..may some folk read these sites and figure why go through those trials and tribulations when Uncle shows lesser support ….almost each year….
I guess it comes down to this: if they are going to throw more money at IHCs then take care of the people you already have. End temps on IHCs. Instead of adding more temps, look at the ones you already have out there breathing cancer-causing smoke and silicate, beating their bodies into the ground, risking their physical and mental health and give them full benefits: retirement credit, year-round health insurance, and a plannable future.
At least get to 90/10 – so two temps max with automatic career positions if they come back a second year.
So many crew members enjoy the lifestyle of being temp hotshots. It’s part of the culture. Work hard in the summer, play hard in the off season.
It’s disappointing that the Supts haven’t been consulted before this letter was sent out. Increasing crew members makes sense but rotating crewmembers for assignments absolutely does not.
Consulting Superintendents or folks that need to do the hiring? From my short nearly 60 yrs of life has been a standard throughout many a Gov or State Agency. WHY get any input from boots on the ground…remember the term insanity and its meaning….anything like that requires a complete CULTURE change…ooops did i use another buzzword??
Increasing crews from 20 to 25. A US wildland Fire Agency. It’s all more of the same: react to fire by pulling out all the stops to suppress it. That’s what got us in the situation we’re in. Are we ever going to become proactive and manage fuels? Pulling fire resources out of the land management agencies to create an independent fire agency is a sure way to ensure the land management agencies cannot manage fuels. A US Wildfire Agency – with no land and no fuels – will prioritize suppressing fires, not managing fuels. There’s money in suppression, not fuels management, so that’s where they’ll go. It’s actually a conflict of interest – prioritizing suppression exacerbates the wildfire problem, making more fire to suppress, which means more money. It’s a vicious cycle we should try to break, not perpetuate.
I’m proud to have been a Hotshot even if it was way back when. Seeing each of my paychecks was a boost but honestly it wasn’t so much the additional pay from fires. It was the pleasure, adventure and excitement of traveling afar (even my first jet flight!) and then getting down and dirty following the orders our supe received in camp. It was fun!! OK, project work kind of sucked but knowing another call would eventually come made the “suffering” worthwhile.
What the feds might do is the death knell for the proud tradition of IHC’s. It will become just another job. Kind of like enlisting in the military. A lot of work. A lot of boring interspersed with some action but all tightly regulated from way up high. If the job description says “X” then X it has to be. If you don’t like X then don’t apply. And that of course goes for non-vaxers, too! Veteran Hotshots? Get out instead of whining if you can’t accept the changes! In the big scheme of things, honestly, you don’t matter. The “new and improved” (LOL) IHC program will eventually pan out but the tradition and pride we Hotshots have known will be lost forever.
Remember (tongue in cheek). New is always better. Bigger is always better. We eventually yield and buy in. But if we don’t, burn baby, burn. LR
I can’t tell if you’re being serious.
Sorry one last thing, shot crews will not do well as a year round resource. if they are expected to fight fire 6 mo ands then do project work for the other 6……Goooooooooood Luck! never gonna happen……Maybe add one month on either end…..maybe…..Project work is great in the beginning of the season or even slow seasons…..lol…..Right, it’s great for conditioning. The Feds are getting ready to experience some sincere growing pains…..it’s gonna hurt……
Word
Not Consulted, I believe you have nailed it….
What will the bump in pay be for a GS-9 on up, will the 9’s see the full 20k, I hope so…
WFM’s are a great resource, very specialized in my opinion, speaking from a NPS perspective, when you need horse power you want to see that shot crew show up…..period…
Again Supts do not supervise everyone on the crew, well yes and no, the captains are responsible for their folks, the supt does not tell you to take the trash out……again yes and no, there is a well designed span of control for a reason….I sure hope everyone see’s a bump in pay….if folks make enough money the incentive for going out on fires assignments may diminish a little, since you all are going to be in a different tax bracket now you can ease up on the gas pedal a bit…..
100% agree with the HP! I am only coming from the supervising standpoint. And spot on….yes and no supervise. Equality on pay is hard no matter where we stand on personnel issues, Job Corp AFMO, couldn’t pay me enough! I would be curious to hear the IHC perspective and a survey of a simple yes or no when they meet this winter.
Can’t split up crews on a rotation
Without more overhead or you will end up with a less productive unit where span of control cannot be maintained
Going as one unit and splitting off operational overhead from crews to help in other functional areas or to put in line with heavy equipment etc. is the norm
Called getting out the butter knife and spreading around skill and experience to help the team or local unit achieve their objectives
But that will all end if the superintendent and assistant are always covering for one another in the time sink known as
The logistics of travel
A real soul sucking endeavor where just having the mandatory Purchase card authority and a ligit chief of party for this is asking a lot
Goes against a hotshot crews biggest strength …….. numbers
Then the 7 person module that is home
Is what available local ?
Don’t sound like rest to me
Sound like stress
When will dispatch be calling for the all hands on deck smoke check
Or the Rx Project that couldn’t quite get pulled off because of numbers until now
Local units have a hard enough time calling for resources when they need them
Fight the fire you have and order the resources when you actually need them just turned into
“Whatever … there will always be 1/3 of a hotshot crew around”
talk about burn out
25 heck ya !
Hire 25 and by the end of the year you will still be at 20 just without having to rely on fills from other fire modules or ADs or the rehire mid spring for two of the seasonals you burned out last year that promised themselves they weren’t going through that again but remember that it wasn’t so bad ….. was it?
So give them more
And when two burn out but two others don’t because they made it to their sisters wedding and are refreshed … you will still have 20 to go be a legitimate type one interagency shared resource
Built to smash large fires and burn huge swaths of federal lands safely
Yeah it does sound great on paper, but when you have never been actually supervising 20, adding more to a crew is not the answer. We have 10, and first of all that is awesome for span of control and logistics, morale, etc. Life is much much easier! Second, we are even having a hard time to fill 10, already had 2 people decline a permanent job bc of the COVID mandate and one more put in for a reasonable accommodation. So for a crew of 10, possibly 3 down already but now have to work harder to fill those 3. Will they get filled? I believe adding crews is the answer, IHC’S aren’t even home for a day or two before they get the next order, and a lot of times, as we all know, the order is in before R&R is up. That’s your answer right there, adding to the crew numbers doesn’t make sense. Oh and R2 Type 1 WFM captains might be GS 9’s….IHC spts a GS 9 too for 25? I wouldn’t sign up for that job.
Hotshots and boots on the ground must be listened too. Stop forcing your DC ideas.
Real change is needed. A USA Wildland Fire Agency.
Come on, really, I would venture to say that most of you have never had to worry about keeping a crew fully staffed, well from experience it’s not easy, going to 25 just means that you can better maintain 20, this is not meant to be the cure all, but maybe help the Supt do their jobs a little better, folks will still get their winters off, or at least most will.
Things have been out of whack for sometime now, it’s not going to be fixed in weeks, months or even years, be patient positive change is coming.
I would venture to say you will never see the numbers (FF’s) that will adequately cover all of our suppression needs, remember administrations change and one day someone if going to come along and demand fiscal responsibility…..29 tril in debt, not at all sustainable, we have been robbing Peter for a long time, the day is coming that Paul is going to want the money back, and most of you will see this occur…..It will not be good….Done…
This may be hard to fill with the vaccine mandate. I know a lot of IHC people who will not be back because of this.
How many is “a lot.”
So much for work/life/ balance… I wonder how this will effect retention in hard to fill hotshot locations, where “most” squad bosses/ PSE’s look forward to escaping for the winter, “GS-7 and GS-6 PFT’s”…Some positives for sure, but most folks get into fire because they want to work hard for the summer and make a living to have freedom in the winter to be nomadic or mix it up and work somewhere completely different than the FS (lots of unique life stlyes are afforded with this schedule), but that will go away unless you want to downgrade to a GS-5 18/8. It’s common to see that once you start getting older and have families you typically want to stick around and be more routine and I see this being helpful also, but a lot of hotshots in general want nothing to do with the FS after a 1,000+ hours of OT and are ready to “peace out” for the winter. Careful what you wish for, this is just the first of new changes that is coming our way, positives and negatives, not sure which one will over ride the other quite yet.
Adding more crews is the solution. Rotating folks off is going to hurt the team dynamics. Rotate whole crews not individuals.
Did they consult current IHC Supts on this idea? lol. Good luck with this..
We’d have to hire 28 or so to get to 25…currently can barely hire 23 to get to 20…
As in people wash, get injured or move on.
Add more crews.
No
The forest circus is nothing but arsonists. The Unconstitutional department of aggravation.
How a shot crew Sup isn’t an GS 11 is beyond my comprehension.
Wow! Very negative Comments…..going to 25 is great for many reasons…..GS-9 pay is adequate to run a crew, shot crews have a lot of overhead….the Captains most often run the crew…..For years I pushed for 25.it’s the ideal number…..people do take time off regardless of the missed income……seasonal’s very rarely take time off, there goal is to make as much as the can in 6 mo and head to Costa Rica…..lol……
This is a good thing….it just is…..They must have listened to someone, they did not just pull this out a hat….Someone has been thinking about this for a very long time……
How will this alter the wildland fire management status quo for in our country? 5 more positions on a shot crew? Great.
How is it not doubling down on strategies that got us where we are? How is it not kicking the can? Do we expect different outcomes as a result of these sorts of decisions?
It’s low hanging fruit and good news for FFTs, but does nothing to achieve goals executive leadership says they want to accomplish
GS9 for a Supt is not enough for what they do already, let alone adding more people to supervise. They need to be converted to GS11.
This is so aggravating. They listen to absolutely nothing but themselves in Washington. There is absolutely no imagination and complete inability to think of anything different than what has been done and failed for 100 years. “Hey, guys let’s just pour more money into it and grow the workforce, and that will surely fix it.” Pathetic.
Granted, there are times when a crew might very well burn out having been on the road for an extended period of time but more likely some individual crew members rather than the entire crew might burn out. The idea of rotating squads or modules back to home base might create frustration among individuals that might be “forced” to miss a fire or to be required to leave a good fire. Certainly it would be a roll of the dice but by season’s end some crew members’ total pay for the season might be substantially higher or lower than other crew members’ i.e. overtime, per diem and hazard pay. As for the crew members rotated to home base, who will supervise that group on in-forest work or projects or will they actually be off-duty?
I’m just looking back at my time on hotshot crews back in the late ’60’s/early ’70’s. I’m certain things have changed but I do know that if I missed a fire I’d be very frustrated. And I do recall an instance when, having been on a series of fires, some crew members were so frustrated about being away from their girlfriends for so long that they were talking about quitting on the spot LR
First 2 comments are spot on. This definitely didn’t come from the boots on the ground. There is a complete review of the crews underway right now, but they have pushed this down before any conclusions or input was gathered from all the folks they included in this review. What a joke. Longer seasons and more employees but keep Supts. At the ridiculous level of a 9.
> by season’s end some crew members’ total pay for the season might be substantially higher or lower than other crew members’ i.e. overtime, per diem and hazard pay.
Doesn’t exactly contribute to CREW COHESION, one of the key points to a functioning IHC.
Hard for many of us to believe any input came from ‘boots on the ground’ for this concoction.
So now GS9 superintendents are supposed to manage even more resources? Outside of land management it’s hard to find supervisory jobs below a GS13.
PFT GS6? 18/8 GS5? I guess these folks won’t ever be able to see their families? And for less than $20/hour, wow.
When I was on a hotshot crew, I could always take time off if I wanted, but I couldn’t AFFORD to take time off. When your annual leave is paid out at $15/hour you get $600/week, but on a fire it’s $2500/week with all the OT and Hazard pay. So going to a wedding makes you miss an assignment and the opportunity cost may be $5k or more, a good chunk of your yearly income. I’m guessing the people in DC developing this policy don’t lose income when they take vacations.
A better way to do this would be to convert more IHC Crewmembers to career positions. Why add more temps when you could convert who you already have to career positions?
If you are really concerned about giving people time off then rethink the 14 day fire assignment. Why not do 9 day assignments with 5 days off?
A better way to approach this would be, “how do we end snaptember?” How can we get our fire crews through the fire season refreshed and ready to work in a healthy way instead of having mental breakdowns by September?
Our workforce has shouldered the load for far too long. It’s not our fault that management has run off most employees, yet we are the ones who pay the price. Just make the job sustainable. PFTs at $18/hour expected to work 2000 base hours on top of 1000 overtime hours and a hundred nights away from home would make anybody burn out.
Did you not hear about the $20,000 a year raise? Aside from that, most of your points are valid.
The pay raise is actually “the *lesser* of an amount that is commensurate with an increase of $20,000 per year or an amount equal to 50 percent of the base salary.” (My emphasis.) So for a GS-4 the pay increase would be about $13,000, while the pay increase for a GS-7 would be about $18,000. Still a good chunk of money but not quite $20,000.
H: Using the “rest of U.S.” General Schedule pay scale dated January, 2021, a GS-4 step 1 would receive a pay increase of $15,760 if they worked all year, and a GS-7 step 1 would receive a pay increase of $20,000.
“If they work all year”….that’s why I’m seeing 11 month jobs on USAJobs! Interesting!!! The NPS and FS can get around this by not hiring people full-time!
Ah thanks for the correction Bill! I must have been looking at an old pay scale.
Rest of united states gs-4/1 is currently 15.10. Multiply that by 1.5 (50% raise over current) = 22.64. That is between step 3 and 4 for a gs-7 currently. Now do the math on however many hours of hazard and overtime you’re accustomed to. It’s a pretty good raise. Or another way to look at it would be every seasonal will be making squad leader money for the season.
Yes Jim, I have heard of that. It’s funded for 2-2.5 years depending on agency interpretation and how fast they spend it. What about retirement credit? Health Insurance? These are reasons to have employees be career employees, not temps. If they are going to say that it’s too expensive to convert temps to career positions, then they add more money and not convert temps, it’s a bit of a slap in the face.
And a GS3 working at $13.45/hour would see a $6.73/hour raise, over 1039 hours that’s about a $7k raise. Hardly the $20k.
Yes! ^^^This^^^ increase hourly wage, make fire assignments 10/4 days instead of 14/2.
Has this “proposal” been run by IHC leadership? I’m guessing not.
Why stop at Hotshot Crews?
Engine crews commonly have 7 people with 5 on per day. This is based on a 5×8 hour days with 2 days off.
With an increased engine crew size you could have 4×10 hour staffing providing fire coverage more hours per day (with climate change the peak daily burning periods are lengthening), plus potentially giving firefighters more time off — acknowledged as a critical issue now.
This is a shameful of the gov.Not to pay you more for your service.Risking your life, can’t put a price on that .But $15 to $20 Doesn’t cut it.And being away from your family for weeks,sleeping in tents.At least put you up in a hotel sometime to recharge. I sure do hope we see a change soon.God bless All Wildland Fire Fighters.
Hmmmm..floating around on Reddit?
Kinda says it all right there!! LOLOLOLOL
So true
The system needs full time all hazards teams and crews. These teams and crews would be permanent full time career positions.
I would change the term to All Risk Teams/Crews. A true national resource professionally trained and certified to respond anywhere, to anything at any time.
Absolutely. The pot sure has been stirred over something “floating around on Reddit”
Well I posted it on Reddit. Do you think it’s some kind of forgery? It’s signed by Jaelith on USFS letterhead and was sent out on government email… Jeez
Nah, i don’t think it’s a forgery at all. But I think a memo posted to Regional Foresters in early November will be a far cry from what the actual implementation will look like. I think 25 person crews could actually be a positive step, but unfortunately 1/4 of crews weren’t able to be statused this summer as is with 20 people. Intentions of the FS are often much different from reality.
Regardless if you like this idea for 25 person crews or if you prefer the traditional 20-22, neither option is sustainable without long term fixes regarding retention, pay, and benefits. The infrastructure bill is a good step in the right direction, no doubt. But Tim’s Act is the best long lasting chance we have at this moment. I encourage everyone to keep contacting their congressmen and congresswomen (those who have maintained some semblance of sanity and not become Q followers) to express your thoughts. Otherwise we are just talking to ourselves hoping to hear what we want (echo chamber right ‘wood’?)
With all respect and like it or not, Reddit has become a platform. Lots of valuable info sharing, Q&A and heads up on job announcements/outreaches. This includes all Type 1 resources like IHCs, WFMs, smoke jumpers and rapplers. It might not be your personal echo chamber but it is here and utilized.
RE: Reddit ….. Twenty years ago the FS brass would flip out if something sketchy was floating around on Mellie’s site.