Revised at 6:56 p.m. PDT Sept. 10, 2021
Since March, 2020, 680 U.S. Forest Service employees in the agency’s California Region have tested positive for COVID-19 according to Anthony Scardina on September 7, 2021, the Deputy Regional Forester for State and Private Forestry. Of those, 561 were wildland firefighters, he said. *Stanton Florea, Fire Communications Specialist for the Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center said on Sept. 8 that approximately 918 wildland fire employees within the entire agency have tested positive for the virus.
Mr. Florea said they do not formally track the number of their employees that have been hospitalized with COVID.
In the last week word leaked that one of those firefighters who tested positive died due to the coronavirus, and a reporter discovered that another died of an unspecified illness. Subsequently, the Lassen National Forest released a statement late at night September 5 confirming the two fatalities and the names of the deceased, but nothing about the cause of death, dates, or the location.
Marcus Pacheco was an assistant engine operator who had 13 years of fire experience with CAL FIRE and 30 with the FS. He died of an unspecified illness while working on the Dixie Fire.
Allen Johnson was a semi-retired 40-year FS veteran and was serving as a Liaison Officer on an Incident Management Team on the French Fire when he contracted COVID.
During an interview September 7 with Wildfire Today we asked Mr. Scardina how many FS firefighters had died in the line of duty after contracting COVID.
“I’m not going to report fatalities of our employees when it comes to personal illnesses and other privacy matters in terms of deaths at this point in time,” he said. “We’re taking a look at those situations, what the review process will be to make sure we understand the facts. And it’s just simply too early out of respect for the family of being appropriate for us to comment at this point in time on those situations.
The deaths were first officially announced to the public in a manner more formal than Facebook Sept. 7, 2021 by Mr. Scardina at a news conference. It was tweeted by both the FS and the California Office of Emergency Services. The CAL OES recording below had much better audio than the FS version.
Our thoughts are with the @forestservice, @usfs_r5 family as they lost two of their own – Allen Johnson and Marcus Pacheco. Your service won’t be forgotten. #FirefightingHeroes pic.twitter.com/qj1Ps5zBU9
— Cal OES (@Cal_OES) September 8, 2021
On September 8 Mr. Florea said there have been two deaths of FS fire personnel that are suspected to be related to COVID. Requests for more details, such as names, dates, name of fire, or location did not receive a response, so it is not certain if these two are the fatalities disclosed by Mr. Scardina on September 7, who also provided no details.
Historically the FS has disclosed fatalities within 24 to 48 hours. The agency usually waits until the families are notified before releasing the names of the deceased, which may take a little longer. Most of the time the general circumstances will also be released, such as hit by a falling tree, vehicle accident, or entrapped by a fire. But for firefighters who contracted COVID on the job, the FS has been extremely reluctant to disclose any information about these line of duty hospitalizations and deaths. The agency’s public information officers whose job is to inform America about FS activities, fires, and circumstances that affect the health and safety of their employees and the public, have been keeping it secret, slow-walking and dissembling when finally responding to requests from journalists about line of duty illnesses and deaths of fire personnel.
One firefighter told Wildfire Today about something he noticed about supervisory personnel at fires. “I’m noticing that all Incident Management Team members are wearing wristbands and being screened everyday,” he said. “This is not happening for firefighters. They are wearing colored wristbands to show they cleared the screening, but nothing for firefighters.”
The firefighter said in order to help protect his family when he got home, he asked to get tested while being demobilized from the fire, but the request was denied.
We are hearing rumblings that some fires are being hit very hard by COVID, with large numbers of personnel testing positive or being quarantined but this is difficult to confirm without the agencies’ cooperation.
Opinion
Fighting wildfires has always had a long list of recognized risks. An analysis by the National Interagency Fire Center determined that from 1990 through 2014 there were 440 fatalities in the line of duty among wildland firefighters. The top four categories which accounted for 88 percent of the deaths were, in decreasing order, medical issues (usually heart related), aircraft accidents, vehicle accidents, and being entrapped by the fire.
The COVID pandemic adds a new category and level of risk from which these firefighters now have to defend themselves. They already wear Kevlar chaps to prevent a chain saw from cutting into their leg, a helmet, leather gloves, hearing protection, safety glasses, fire resistant shirts and pants, and a five-pound foldable shelter to climb under when entrapped by a fire.
Many of these highly-trained firefighters comprise more than 100 hotshot crews. They are tactical athletes who carry more than 30 pounds of gear up and down steep, rugged terrain for up to 16 hours every day while battling a fire, sometimes miles from the nearest vehicle. They immerse themselves in wildland fire science and fire behavior to anticipate what the fire will do in order to avoid unnecessary exposure to risks.
But now their employer, the US Forest Service, is reluctant to fully disclose to them a key fact related to their safety — how many of their fellow firefighters have been hospitalized or killed in the line of duty by COVID.
The FS has not been disclosing COVID line of duty deaths the same way they announced that two firefighters were killed in an airplane crash or one died after being hit by a falling tree, all within the last two months.
COVID among firefighters is not really a “personal illness”, as described Mr. Scardina, when it is caused by a requirement from their employer, for example, to travel across the country and work with 4,809 others at the Dixie Fire in California. For decades the Forest Service and the other four federal land management agencies have, as far as we know, reported all line of duty deaths, including illnesses such as cardiac issues, which might be described as a “personal illness”.
It is puzzling that the leadership in the federal wildland fire organizations are so scared or reluctant to talk about the effects of COVID on their work force. I don’t see any upside in a doomed-to-fail effort to keep it secret. Maybe it is a holdover thought process from the previous administration whose leader said at least 38 times in 2020 between February and October that COVID-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing.
By refusing to be transparent about pandemic related illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths on the job, the perception could be that the government has something to hide or they want to restrict the disclosure of news that could reflect negatively on the administration. It would be impossible to argue that withholding this information is in the best interests of the employees. And it degrades the trust that an employee would hope to have in their leadership.
Far more important than protecting the political future of the President, is being honest with their firefighters about the degree of risk they are taking while serving their country battling wildfires.
Something has to change
Federal wildland firefighters work for the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. The first responsibility of these agencies is the safety of their personnel, including the 15,000 firefighters. If they are so cavalier about this responsibility to not even care how many have been hospitalized in the line of duty, and keep secret as much as possible the extent of how many have gotten seriously ill or died from COVID while working for them, then something has to change.
The primary job of these five agencies is not fighting fire — it is very far from it. They inspect meat packing plants, issue what used to be called Food Stamps, clean rest rooms, manage visitors, and grow trees. Those at the top of the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior where they presently reside, in most cases have no background in emergency services. It is not in their DNA to worry night and day about those under their command being injured or killed in the line of duty. Career fire personnel understand this.
The firefighters in these five agencies need to be exfiltrated from the DOI and DOA and given refuge in a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security where top management pays attention to the risks emergency management personnel face. If I was a betting man, I would wager that they care how many of their employees have been killed or hospitalized by COVID, at least publicly to the extent allowed by the White House.
This new agency of 15,000 wildland firefighters could be named National Fire Service. It could even welcome the structural firefighters that work for the Department of Defense.
Below are the stated values and principles of wildland fire leaders. They may have been forgotten by a few at the top of the five federal wildland fire management organizations.
*At 6:56 p.m. PDT the article was edited to correct the numbers of Forest Service fire personnel who tested positive for COVID since March, 2020; 918 nationally, and 561 in the California Region (R5). The regional and national numbers do not conflict.
Funny, I didn’t hear you complaining how the USFS wasn’t saying anything about the much larger than normal number of aviation mishaps and resulting fatalities over the last 2 years and how they were likely due to (or at least had a strong correllation with) the greatly increased use of aircraft in the early stages of fires, as prescribed by every single GACC COVID-19 response plan prior to the 2020 fire season. If you think we are unaware that there is a possibility of catching COVID-19 when at a fire, then I suspect you have not visited a fire camp or ICP lately. Reminders are everywhere.
I doubt they are hiding COVID related deaths, they just aren’t tracking them. The agency is not going to investigate illness related deaths due to HIPPA and lack of a mechanism to do so.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t, I’m just saying they aren’t because they’ve never done it before and would need a law directing them to do so. And, even if that happens they will never be able to accurately track that info.
I would tend to agree with you WM. Is there even a specific individual assigned to fires to monitor Covid cases?
Or make sure Covid protocols are being followed? I’d say no, to this question. My husband has been on 4 fires this summer, large and small, with quite varying attitudes about Covid by the ICT, which includes what part of country they’re from, contract crews, equipment operators, etc…. Even when a lead SO reminded ppl of Covid protocols, it was in one ear and out the other. And, testing to attend a briefing in the AM varied.
Three individuals on one crew tested for Covid, the whole crew had to leave the fire. A STL was sent to a hotel room for quarantine.
The attitude as in the general population doesn’t seem to be any different. I feel that’s unfortunate, as fires, well, burn everywhere regardless of “Covid perspective.”
Most individual forest have a covid management team in place. Normally these individual are collateral duty folks that are ill equipped to handle emergency response.
They have regional Covid Incident Management Teams in place and are tracking this data. And some incident teams have a dedicated covid coordinator to coordinate the teams covid response protocols. The boots on the ground firefighters may not see them but they are interacting with local health officials.
Well said Bill.
When the North Fork fire blew up in Colorado, fire was moved from the State Forest Service to our Division of Fire Prevention and control. Here’s a story about how that worked. https://www.cpr.org/2021/01/28/foresters-want-more-prescribed-burns-to-avoid-future-wildfire-disasters-in-colorado-but-the-state-forest-service-isnt-allowed-to-conduct-them/
Firefighters don’t just swarm all over a fire. When the Incident Commander orders in a strike team (or 20), they have specific assignments in mind for each unit. When an engine or crew becomes unable to function because of illness, that leaves a hole in the suppression effort. With the existing shortage of resources, that may be a hole that takes considerable time to fill. Just as crews spend weeks training before reporting themselves available for dispatch, part of that preparation should include getting all the various vaccines to protect against hazards including Covid-19.
Sending out a crew not vaccinated against a known hazard would be like sending out a crew with half the chainsaws and pulaskis they need.
So if they create a Nat’l Fire Service, under Homeland Security, how would initial attack be conducted and from where, if not from the individual agency stations?
This is pure irony. Federal fire policy since 1978 has intended fire management to be integrated more tightly into LAND management because it was clearly recognized how ineffective firefighting alone is. The more we fight, the worse the fires get, and the more money we spend. Somehow, now the fire problems can be addressed by removing the fire organization from the FS? Others have pointed out the decline and now abject failure of FS leadership to reform fire management and the entire mission. The solution is to support real leadership not just role-playing bureaucrat RFs and Chiefs. Not gonna happen with the current crop of “leaders”.
Write you representatives and senators often and ask friends and family to do the same. They are read but often they count the number of letters about a topic and react when they get a lot. Even if it’s just a few sentences with a link to a story like this one, it helps to push them to do something.
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
I totally agree with this writing as of 14 years of Federal Service with the BLM and Forest Service – this writing is total correct about fighting wildfires now in 2021
Actually I am glad I am still alive now from my years of fighting wildland fires ,,,,
Please don’t advocate for placing anymore people in the Department of Homeland Security. It consistently rates as having lower morale than anywhere else in the Federal Government and has a history of neglecting emergency response to focus on nebulous national security issues. Ask FEMA how the move has worked out for them. The Wildland workforce certainly doesn’t need to be an afterthought to a mostly law enforcement and border security outfit.
Call me an “old coot” with an opinion. I have an opinion, and it is this: Their is no Leadership from FS Line Officers. There is however lots of “Cover Your Ass!” I started in 71, left in 05
Watched the outfit crumble and “Leadership” dissolve. If the outfit is good at anything, it is having meetings, that accomplish nothing! They cudgel employees that speak up, yet they fail in the mission of being the Forest “Service”.. They need to be gone.
J.W., I too am an old Coot after starting in 72 and retiring in 10 and am in total agreement with you for today’s TOTAL lack of leadership and knowledge of fire in the F.S. !!!!!!
What a shameful AGENCY. What a Shame they have become………
Does HIPPA mean anything in these comments? You can only discuss what the symptoms were, how it was treated, but never the persons name.
That’s not quite true. HIPAA is only relevant for health care providers. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say none of us commenters were these folks’ medical providers so hipaa is irrelevant here
Right you are. Remember to words from the 8 line. Never announce the persons name over the radio. And just how does the agency get the info from the health care providers?
I suspect that any attempt to centralize Federal wildland fire in a single dedicated agency will ultimately result in more or less total deprioritization of non-fire-suppression land management tasks that are already woefully underfunded, including things like fuels and range that are pretty closely bound up with long-term fire outcomes. Compare to the many forests that eliminated or drastically reduced their roads departments during the MEL buildup.
Ben, I agree. I’ve tried FOIAing FS multiple times and I just get blacked out pieces of paper, so yeah, they are covering a lot of stuff up. I think the FS needs to do some soul searching and come clean and if they did maybe they could win back the hearts and minds of their employees and maybe even the public. Oh, and it sounds like you got a start to a really good book! I’d read it! Have a great week-end!
For an agency with a teddy bear mascot dealing with public lands they sure make you feel like they are running some classified black ops and protecting state secrets… Makes no sense other than they don’t care or complete incompetence
Hey.
The raw mortality of Covid 19 over the span mentioned in the article would be 2% infected; or about 11 deaths expected of the 562 that tested positive. However, the Delta variant has a mortality closer to 10 times the Alpha variant for the un-vaccinated; there is not enough data to estimate from this article. Ultimately we (including Firefighters) can NOT treat a pandemic as if it is an individual Medical issue when 42 million Americans have been infected and we are in the 4th wave of this mass illness.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture? According to my Wife, this is because “forests” are treated like a crop to harvest over decades instead of seasons. Except, that “we” deal with building the roads, the erosion, replanting after the harvest and “protection” of the crop from fire as well.
So, do you believe that the Dept. of Homeland Security would actually “care” if a crop is burning when perhaps Firefighters could be deployed during “border wall disputes,” “selective protests needing to be squashed” or any other “action” deemed “homeland security?”
It becomes a Homeland Security issue when anyone with a single match can destroy entire communities, burn down our forests, cost $100M, cause multiple deaths, sicken our citizens with smoke, and destroy other critical infrastructure such as water supplies for entire counties.
So yeah, I think DHS would be interested.
Ben,
Drought, large persistent heat waves along with lightning strikes caused a large number of these fires.
Why not treat Wildfire as we treat flooding with Fire Prevention Grants?
Example. Louisiana received $1.2 billion in Flood Prevention Grants in 2018 alone. In 1968 the National Flood Insurance Program was created to provide “Federally Backed Flood Insurance Coverage.” However, it costs about $1.4 billion each year to “back” the insurance program annually. Some $27 billion was spent last year for flood control while $2.1 billion was spent on Wildfire; at the Federal level.
Sure, DHS may be “interested” in Wildfire but the Forest Service has actually been involved with Wildfire for over 100 years now; imperfect as it is. DHS was born after 9/11 to prevent future ‘attacks.” So, in my opinion, punting Wildfire over to them may not get the results we are looking for.
If a Firefighter dies of COVID-19 is that considered a Line of Duty Death?
Does anyone else feel like the leadership is just covering everything up?
COVID- They are operating against Biden’s intent, that all unvaccinated be restricted from travel and are tested.
Staffing- NIFC keeps saying we are 94% staffed, despite their own leaked documents showing evidence to the contrary.
Mental Health – don’t have any statistics
Cancer – no statistics or even reporting method
Women in fire – single digit percentage and subject to GAO audit, not a word from leadership.
I could go on and on, but the USFS and DOI leadership are engaged in a massive breach of the public trust. Time to move on
“If you don’t like it then leave”.
Epic. Thank you to “Randy Moore”.
Amen!!! Preach on!!! Totally Agree!!!