By Jared Bandor
The days when men could be rallied from nearby towns to suppress wildfires for a few months during the year are long gone. Today, each of the five major U.S. federal land management agencies that have wildland fire suppression responsibilities – Bureau of Land Management, National Parks Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the U.S. Forest Service – maintain a permanent wildland fire workforce complemented by a significant temporary workforce.
In recent years, professional education has been discussed as an answer to combat the change in severity and complexity of wildfires and the issues the agencies face in suppressing them.
[This is an edited extract of an article in Wildfire Magazine. Click for the full article]
In many career fields of U.S. federal employment, a professional education is highly regarded and often required, but not in wildland fire. Proponents of institutionalizing an education system in the agencies argue that fire personnel who manage large budgets, cultivate trust of the public and politicians, supervise and lead people in dangerous situations, and collaborate with multiple government organizations should have more than a high school education. Opponents to implementing a more formal education argue that there is a well-functioning system in place that includes a governing body that sets standards, a digital system to track and document completed training, and a learning management system to create and deliver the training and educational content. With the increasing complexity of wildfires impacting communities and rising demands on firefighters to do more over the last several decades, the federal wildland fire agencies should invest in workforce education to better prepare their employees’ decision making and instill stakeholder trust.
If professional education is institutionalized, alongside training, in the federal wildland fire agencies, personnel and managers could better meet the modern demands of the job that were not as prolific or even existed 40 to 50 years ago.
Higher education could be the solution for many issues the U.S. federal wildland fire agencies are facing by incentivizing with earnings and advancement, equipping firefighters with knowledge and skills for the next position and increasing public confidence.
While the current training system for the federal wildland fire agencies is valuable and should not be replaced, the climate of wildland fire has evolved and requires a more resilient and progressive approach to workforce development. Institutionalizing a professional education system will prepare firefighters for the unprecedented severity and complexity of modern wildfires, better equip them as they advance in their careers to meet current challenges and increase stakeholder and public trust in the agencies and the workforces they employ. If the federal wildland fire agencies do not adapt, they will fail. Professionalized education must be integrated into the wildland fire workforce to ensure the nation’s disasters are not national tragedies.
This article is not meant to be prescriptive or detailed on how to institutionalize education but to provoke thoughts about how the agencies can better prepare their employees to meet the ever-changing demands of wildland fire.
The views and opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the U.S. government. The author is writing in a personal capacity and does not represent any federal entity.
[This is an edited extract of an article in Wildfire Magazine. Click for the full article]
Jared Bandor works for the United States Forest Service, Region 6, at the Pacific Northwest Training Center, where he serves as training specialist. His main duties are serving as the training officer for regional employees, facilitating and instructing regional level courses, and supporting workforce development initiatives for Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) employees. Bandor has a diverse operational background on handcrews, engines, and helitak, as well as fuels, prevention, and training. He is completing a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership, which he plans to use in future workforce development opportunities in the agency.
Currently, all federal land management agencies are having difficulty in recruiting, training and retaining wildland firefighters at all levels. Lack of pay and benefits, toxic leadership, no affordable housing/no housing, cost of living, poor work life balance, limited budgets, bad training and having to deal with OWCP for on the job injuries are all issues that every firefighter faces. The changing dynamic and leadership at the national, regional/state and local levels changes every year, and firefighters move around to increase their education, opportunities and for promotion. Long gone are the days where a firefighter was a local who lived and worked in an area and spent their entire career in one place. Placing additional educational requirements will only make it worse. Didn’t we try this a few years ago with the USFS/401 series and it didn’t work then? The current training provided by NWCG in their S courses is, in some areas, many years behind. There is no consistency of training across agencies as committees drag their feet on updating courses and in providing new training. The Apprenticeship program was supposed to provide a pipeline for candidates to fast track into entry level jobs in fire. Unfortunately it has been shortened and simplified to the point that they are not providing quality employees. Forests and districts are spending a lot of time training/retraining supposedly qualified personnel and many move on and take jobs elsewhere. Wildland Firefighters need a pay and benefits increase first and foremost. Then better housing, better access to health care and updated training. We need to take care of our entry and intermediate level firefighters, or we will have no one to bring up at the upper levels. Adding additional educational requirements will only make this process worse and take money and resources away from where it is needed most, for the firefighters on the ground, at the end of a pulaski, shovel or chainsaw.
This article has some interesting opinions and is certainly a topic worth discussing more as an industry. However, I’m not convinced that this will make any significant difference other than possibly creating some more public trust as we would no longer be “unskilled and uneducated laborers”.
While there are many federal careers that require a degree or some form of higher education, it doesn’t eliminate the fact that employees still deal with layer of bureaucracy, political BS and lower wages compared to industry standards. If we make a professional education mandatory for WLFFs, we’ll still deal with all the same issues except with a workforce that now has thousands of dollars in individual student loan debt. Fires will continue to burn more acres and cost taxpayers more money regardless of our education levels. I fail to see how professionalized education will “ensure the nation’s disasters are not national tragedies.”
The problem with higher education is that it focuses too much on time in the classroom, getting credits and earning a diploma instead of getting hands on experience and exposure to a particular field. Are there middle to upper management positions that can benefit from a more formalized education? Definitely! But should it be mandatory? Absolutely not! Pretty much everything in this industry can be learned through on the job training and experience so why make it more complicated than it needs to be? Maybe focus more on improving the classes and trainings we already have in place (S, L, RT, RX, etc) instead of mandating a bachelor’s degree for jobs that don’t need it.
First, even the new pay structure is not compensation to attract college graduates. But, more importantly, a college education is not necessary for people to have the qualities and skills to excel in fire management. Perhaps specific courses in leadership, etc. are appropriate, but a 4 year degree doesn’t teach what’s needed.