Fire and Climate – a special and timely collection

The 2026 wildfire season shows us that with increased wildland fire risk, more intense fire behaviour, longer seasons, and fire evolving across many landscapes, a changing climate poses significant challenges to today’s fire regimes and management strategies.

The International Journal of Wildland Fire has published a Special Collection to showcase papers from and inspired by the Fire and Climate conferences hosted by the International Association of Wildland Fire in 2022 in Pasadena, United States and Melbourne, Australia.

The collection explores the way that climate change is affecting wildfire around the world – and the ways that changes in societal, legal, and political climate changes interact with these geophysical processes.

The following is the editors’ foreword to the Collection plus links to the individual papers.

Guest IJWF Editors
Eric B. Kennedy (York University, Canada)

Nuria Prat-Guitart, Pau Costa Foundation, Spain

Richard Thornton, Australia

For readers of the International Journal of Wildland Fire (IJWF), the connections between climate change and wildland fire need almost no introduction. The effects of climate change have been a repeated topic of investigation over the 35-year history of the journal, with researchers and practitioners from around the globe grappling with its impacts on fire regimes, management practices and wildfire’s effects on society. Indeed, in the very first issue of the journal, Simard wrote of the need to attend to global climate change in thinking about fire severity across timescales (1991). Since then, over 300 articles have been published through IJWF that include climate in their title or abstract.

Throughout this time, the journal has played host to all sorts of investigations of fire and climate change, offering a more nuanced and complex understanding of fires past, present and future. Many studies, for example, have explored the many ways that climate change may affect fire regimes in particular regions, such as de Santana et al. (2022) in the Amazon, King et al. (2011) in Australia, Wotton et al. (2010) in Canada and Pimont et al. (2022) in France, to name only a few of dozens of such important inquiries. Similar investigations have also spanned scales from the global (e.g. Flannigan et al. 2009) to extremely local study sites (e.g. Honig and Fulé 2012). Climate change’s impacts have also been shown to be profoundly human: climate change effects on wildfires, for instance, present potentially increasing health impacts, like the growing public health risk as result of increasing wildfire smoke exposure (e.g. Reisen et al. 2015). Climate change also stresses contemporary management practices, requiring reflection on approaches to land and fire management (e.g. Diggins et al. 2010; Aponte et al. 2016), such as increasing challenges in finding suitable prescribed fire opportunities (Kupfer et al. 2020).

The IJWF has also been home to critical perspectives on the complexities and nuance of climate change, its impacts and its uncertainties. In 1999, for instance, McAlpine argued that climate change was not yet detectable in fire management expenditure trends. In 2010, Bergeron et al. suggested that while climate change would increase burn rates, the increase from climate changes alone might be relatively modest in comparison with the natural range of variability. And, in contrast, Peace and McCaw (2024) have argued that existing science underestimates the potential impact of climate change on fire behavior and difficulties in conducting fire suppression operations.

Despite this rich foundation of empirical and theoretical work, however, it is clear that significant questions remain unanswered (Little et al. 2025). While it is often tempting to think of climate change in terms of planetary averages, its impacts are unlikely to be homogeneous across the globe. As such, some of today and tomorrow’s research questions are found in localization: how might climate change affect particular fire regimes, ecosystems or human/fire relationships in different regions across the planet? Other questions emerge as we adopt a broader understanding of climate change, such as its impact on watersheds or catchments and water supplies (e.g. Rhoades et al. 2019), the impact of widespread smoke exposure (Henderson et al. 2024), the social and human dimensions of fire (e.g. McCaffrey et al. 2012; Christianson 2014), or even the ways that fire-mediated climate impacts can relate to mental health, climate grief, sociopolitical instability and varied forms of suffering (Newman Thacker et al. 2025). Reflection will be required on the role of fire science and how to reform the enterprise to overcome challenges with siloed work or research isolated from practice (see Copes-Gerbitz et al. 2024). More questions will still emerge as we identify potentially paradoxical or counterintuitive impacts of climate change, such as ways that short term fire reductions or sharper oscillations into wet cycles might have medium and long-term risks for fire.

Multiplicative impacts and climate(s) changing

More challenging, though, than these individual research questions alone is dealing with two layers of complexity.

The first is the multiplicative impact of climate change when situated amidst many other factors that influence fire regimes. A changing geophysical climate does not exist in isolation but is interconnected with the impacts of historic and current approaches to suppression; changes to fuel and vegetation management; the marginalization of indigenous and local fire knowledges and practices; changes in where and how we build and live in interface and intermix areas; and so on. These diverse stressors are not simply additive when it comes the impact of climate change, but often multiplicative. Atmospheric changes interacting with these physical, ecological and sociological dimensions often creates a challenge that is much bigger than the sum of their parts, and where the localized outcomes are the result of a complex interplay between these many factors.

These multiplicative effects in the causal pathways also interact, causing cascading and compounding fire impacts. Changes in our fire regimes are the result of these many stressors multiplying together, but they can be further exacerbated when ‘compounding’ events – two or more events occurring simultaneously, such as heatwaves, droughts and wildfires – further amplify the impacts of the fire on life safety, public health, ecological damage and community resilience. Also, the cascading nature of fire events – such as subsequent events triggered by the fire like impacts on drinking water quality and quantity or soil stability and erosion – provides yet more of complexity. Effectively managing fire and climate requires tackling its multiplicative nature, as well as its compounding and cascading impacts.

The second, and even broader challenge, comes from the changes in climates, plural. While we typically use the term ‘climate change’ to refer to atmospheric and geophysical changes alone, it is readily apparent that many different climates are changing concurrently. Writing this introduction in mid-2025, it is hard to overstate how much the political and governance climate for wildland fire has changed. For many US-based colleagues in fire, these shifts are existential: how fire management will be arranged at an institutional level; whether fire, weather and climate research will continue to exist in any meaningful capacity; and what transnational and international fire collaboration and fire diplomacy will look like now and into the future. Despite its deeply ecological and meteorological subject matter, fire management is fundamentally a social and political enterprise, and the governance climate is at least as influential over fire regimes as the atmospheric climate.

Social climates are just as central to fire regimes. As extreme fire events continue to occur, and indeed increase, and as charismatic, impactful and tragic fires continue to garner public attention, the way we imagine fire – and our ideal relationship with it – may either change or become more deeply engrained. In turn, these beliefs, attitudes and assumptions can shape what solutions are seen as possible (or even considered at all). Shifting demographic, cultural and geospatial drivers over how we arrange our societies will have profound impact on what the wildland–urban interface and intermix areas look like, as well as changing the ‘social contract’ vital for fire management. To what degree, for example, will public expectations for metropolitan levels of fire protection grow as urbanites migrate to rural areas, and how will wildland fire’s progression into urban conflagrations challenge these metropolitan norms? How much money are we willing to allocate to fire, and how will it be apportioned between mitigation, response and recovery? And, how will existing institutions like insurance and utilities navigate what may become existential-level challenges? We can even think of broader social climates – like societal views about the degree to which we ought to care for our neighbors, strangers and our planet – which ripple into our choices about fire in particular.

And, underpinning all of this, our philosophy of fire will continue to ebb and flow. Such paradigmatic changes have occurred historically, from broad use of fire, to mentalities of total suppression, and back towards at least partially acknowledging that fire is vital and necessary. How will we define fire on a fundamental level: enemy or friend; problem or symptom; exceptional emergency or ongoing relationship? What do we owe to one another in society when it comes to fire and our approaches to managing it? Whose knowledge counts and who is included when it comes to fire management? These ontological, ethical and epistemological questions – and the philosophical culture of fire that arises from how we answer them – will continue to represent another profound form of change.

At the same time, there is also potential to induce beneficial shifts in sociopolitical climates that shape wildfire and our relationship with it. Shifts towards global collaborations – such as the 2025 launch of the Global Fire Management Hub of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or increasingly diversified mutual aid agreements on a global scale – indicate that polarization, isolationism and competition are not the only possible approaches to managing fire. A redoubled commitment towards equity, diversity and inclusion is also seen in some global organizations, reminding us that fire management must serve all – and is stronger when we can leverage everyone’s experience, wisdom and expertise.

Geophysical climate change, for all its irresolvable complexity, in some ways represents a comparatively simple component of these interwoven challenges. What the fire management enterprise faces over the months, years and decades ahead is the coupled challenge of atmospheric climate change multiplied by many other stressors, and the fact that atmospheric climate change is only one of several changing climates shaping fire management today.

Introducing the articles in the special issue

It is in this context of complexity that the special issue was launched. Born out of a series of ‘Fire and Climate’ conferences run by the International Association of Wildland Fire in Pasadena, California, US and Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, this special issue brings together projects emerging from those discussions and deliberations. While the articles ultimately included in this issue tend towards a more traditional geophysical understanding of climate, they also allude to and open up questions of this multiplicative nature of fire, as well as how changing climates (plural) will affect fire regimes and fire management and ultimately how people live with fire.

Some of the articles that follow fit seamlessly into the rich tradition of work in IJWF on fire and climate change described at the opening of this introduction. Lambrechts et al. (2024), for example, explore what a changing climate could mean for fire danger days in the Netherlands. By looking at the impact of climate change on fine fuel moisture codes and fire weather index values, Lambrechts et al. assessed the prospective changes under ‘limited’ and ‘rapid’ climate change scenarios. While the limited change scenario has no substantial increase in fire danger days, the rapid scenario could see almost a doubling of fire danger days by the end of the century. These risks are also not spread evenly across the country, with the biggest risk increase occurring in the southern and central regions of the country.

Similarly, Plucinski et al. (2023) examine the ways that climate changes manifest in impacts on fire behavior. They explore the role of drought in fire and particularly the relationship between two Australian drought measures, the Keetch–Byram Drought Index and McArthur’s Drought Factor, and different ways of assessing fire occurrence. Two of the most relevant conclusions for understanding climate change are (1) that ‘it need only take a drying event of a few weeks during a fire season to lead to a spike in fire ignitions’ (p. 7) and (2) that it’s critical to understand regional variation in interpreting the values provided by both metrics (e.g. differences in solar energy, evaporation, topography and vegetation coverage).

Other articles in the issue examine how climate change fits into dimensions of wildland fire. Taylor et al. (2023), for example, look at the association between Australian fire behavior and major climate drivers like El Nino, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the Southern Annular Mode. In documenting these connections, Taylor et al. urge readers to understand the importance of knowing when these signals are most useful (e.g. a positive IOD in winter should be a potential warning to southern and central Australian bushfire authorities, while a positive IOD in spring only offers ‘minor increases in probability ratios for eastern Australia,’ p. 21). If models better accounted for these phenomena, and if managers understand the nuances of how to read these signals, there is potential to make operational improvements in scheduling prescribed fire, firefighter recruitment and other preparedness activities.

Underwood et al. (2024) explores another prospective impact of climate change: the way that fire can affect ‘ecosystem services’ performed by different species, such as the adverse impact of affected native shrubland loss on carbon storage, water runoff and erosion. Underwood et al. developed an online tool that combines pre-fire ecosystem services data and burn severity data to produce estimates for resource managers of how ecosystem services are affected by a particular fire. Such a tool has the potential to assist managers in targeting post-fire recovery and restoration activities.

Contributors to the special issue also grapple with questions around how climate change may be connected to prescribed burning. McCormack et al. (2023) unpack the critically important governance dimensions of prescribed burning. It’s easy for those of us in fire to articulate that we should ‘get more good fire on the landscape,’ but the devil is in the details: what laws, procedures, frameworks, policies, epistemologies, norms and identities enable or constrain that burning. McCormack et al. dive into these nuances, contrasting the enabling and constraining laws – and the changes in these laws over time – that affect prescribed burning in New South Wales, Australia and California. They insightfully draw out the ways that legal reform is inherently difficult, both in managing tensions between seemingly incommensurate goals (e.g. red tape reduction versus meaningful engagement and value negotiation), as well as in the importance for both iterative improvement and stability. This comparative study offers practical utility for lawmakers worldwide and also calls out for similarly detailed work on enablers and constraints on transformative approaches to fire management worldwide.

Partridge et al. (2024) pull the curtain back on some of the complexities involved in restoring prescribed fire to Australian landscapes. Drawing on a series of case studies, they identify that intensity matters: higher intensity fires risk increasing fuel density through promoting excessive shrubs and saplings. While these conditions can occur in wildfires, they are also possible when prescribed burns are conducted during dryer conditions – which can have the impact of reducing plant density. It can become part of a negative feedback loop, where native grasses smothered out by these burns are exactly the grasses required to sustain lower-intensity burns in the future, leading to a ‘hot fire trap’ for managers. The goal – at least from the standpoint of minimizing woody thickening – is low-intensity, patchy burning, which will likely require a variety of management techniques and a willingness to see the prospective risks with prescribed fire under more intense conditions.

Finally, two of the articles in the special issue also engage with questions of how we represent fire – and changing fire under climate change – in computational terms. Campbell-Lochrie et al. (2023) tackle a foundational question in fire science: how do we model the spread of fire and flame? In a sector where models are stacked and interlocked, with end-user tools relying on underlying assumptions and basic science, it’s critical to question whether tools like the Rothermel model have the potential to overpredict, underpredict or misrepresent likely fire behavior. Campbell-Lochrie et al. take this on by exploring fuel structures – such as the packing and density underlying fuel loading – in laboratory-based experiments. They find an almost 30% mean deviation between predicted and observed spread, suggesting considerations for those relying on this model in both application and experimental setups.

Radford et al. (2024) confront a perennial challenge in fire modeling: the typical need to trade off model accuracy for computational costs like runtime. In their paper, they propose an asset-centric approach to modeling that can account for multiple different spatial scales. Such asset-centric modeling has often been hampered by its comparatively more limited use of landscape and weather data, which can result in the inability to predict directionally specific patterns in fire spread such as fire shadows. Radford et al.’s new model offers a different balance which, based on testing in South Australia, seems to enable computational efficiencies while still affording more accurate fire pattern prediction.

Complexity and changing climates

The multiplicative forces and the cascading and compounding dimensions of wildland fire, together with the many different changes in climates we face all create significant pressures for managing wildland fire. They illustrate the ways that fire is both causal and symptomatic of larger societal conditions. They also highlight the ways that solving the fire problem- if that is even definable- requires attending to many large challenges we face in society more generally, whether that be atmospheric climate change, or the many other sociopolitical climate changes that fire managers must grapple with. Fire science will play a crucial role in highlighting and tackling these complex issues, but we will also have to think about the broader context within which this science occurs; issues of public trust, of protecting institutions and expertise, and of learning to live with all sorts of sparks, flash points and fires, literal and metaphorical.

Read the full Fire and Climate Special Collection in the International Journal of Wildland Fire – a publication of the International Association of Wildland Fire and CSIRO Publishing.

Rethinking cause, consequence and investigation in the UK

A wildfire spreading across shrubs (gorse). Photo: Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service.

By Rhodri Jones

In an era of climate volatility, sprawling urban development, and rising societal pressures, wildfires in the United Kingdom have evolved from seasonal phenomena into persistent national threats.

No longer confined to distant wildernesses, wildfires pose real and recurring dangers to communities, economies, and ecosystems.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

During the July 2022 heatwave, multiple wildfires occurred across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. In 2022 – for the first time – the UK capital London was significantly hit by a wildfire season that included the destruction of 18 houses in the suburb town of Wennington.

In the summer of 2025, there were more than 700 recorded wildfire incidents in England and Wales that burned between 29,000 and 35,000 hectares of moorland, forest, and grassland (which is equivalent to the metropolitan area of Washington D.C), putting a huge strain on fire and rescue services. Comparatively, there were half this number in 2023 and 2024 respectively, primarily due to wet summers, however both 2023 and 2024 recorded approximately 150 more fires than 2022.

In the UK, wildfires are not forensically investigated.

Despite growing in scale and severity the UK’s fire investigation communities’ understanding of the root causes of most wildland fires remains limited, guided primarily by international literature and a lack of scientific rigor given the nuanced complexities that come with wildfire investigation. Wildfire incident record data suggests that causation is split equally between accident or negligence and deliberate ignition, with the latter potentially underreported due to the lack of investigations. This data represents not only unintentional ignitions from human activity but also intentional acts ranging from vandalism and thrill-seeking to ideological motivations. Humans are not merely victims of wildfire – they are often instigators.

The 2023 Wildfire Investigation Project Report provides a framework for determining cause and origin but also considers issues such as pyro-terrorism.

Reframing the cause: beyond climate alone

My secondment to the UK Forestry Commission – a UK government department responsible for the management of woodlands and forests – from the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, reinforced what years of my research to better understand wildfire suggested: the assumed causes of wildfire are often speculative, unproven or incomplete. The tendency to focus solely on climate or accidental human behaviors does little to inform effective prevention or policy.

Instead, the narrow focus diverts attention from the complex reality, including the underappreciated frequency and impact of deliberate ignition.

Wildfire research has also explored the concept of pyro-terrorism – arson-induced wildfires as potential tools of political violence or sabotage. Although pyro-terrorism is statistically less common than other causes of unplanned wildfire, the threat is recognized in academic literature due to its potential to disrupt infrastructure, economies, and public morale with minimal resources. In the Russia-Ukraine conflict there have been reports of wildfires – caused by drones – being used as a tactic of modern day warfare. In this sense, wildfire investigation is not only an environmental and public safety necessity but also a national security concern.

The UK’s emerging response: from security to resilience

Historically, the UK lacked formal mechanisms for consistent wildfire investigation, relying instead on fragmented data and assumptions. This began to change in early 2023, during my secondment to the Forestry Commission, with the development of a UK-specific wildfire investigation framework. Drawing inspiration from international best practices, including the U.S. National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s (NWCG) F110 and F120 programs, a bespoke model was proposed in the April 2023 Wildfire Investigation Report, tailored to the UK’s landscape, urban interfaces, and operational context. (Search April 2023 Wildfire Investigation Report + Rhodri Jones.)

The framework emphasizes that investigating wildfires is not just about identifying ignition points but also about disrupting cycles of destruction before they begin, understanding fire mechanics, analyzing the psychology of arsonists, and evaluating the socio-economic drivers of landscape mismanagement. The framework also considers the strategic motivations behind deliberate ignition, ensuring that even low-probability threats such as pyro-terrorism are not ignored.

The framework and proposed training are under development but have been endorsed by the National Fire Chiefs Council, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, the Forestry Commission, the Home Office, and Natural England, the government’s advisor for the natural environment. Given that the 2025 wildfires demonstrated a tangible national threat, the concept of wildfire investigation will hopefully evolve from a development program into a full-fledged project, supported by an array of stakeholders. The framework’s message is clear: without structured, evidence-led investigation, wildfire prevention efforts risk being reactive, inefficient, and misdirected.

Why investigation matters now more than ever

Wildfire investigation goes far beyond the mechanics of fire; it encompasses human behavior, socio-economic factors, and psychological drivers, equipping authorities to anticipate incidents, understand trends, and prevent recurrence. In the UK context, where deliberate and accidental ignitions occur in roughly equal measure, the ability to distinguish motives and patterns is essential for effective policy, resource allocation, and community safety.

International experience demonstrates the value of such approaches. In Australia, for example, arson prevention programs in primary schools that aim to reduce the number of bushfires ignited in parks near schools on Friday afternoons have had a positive impact in addressing the socio-behavioral causes of wildfire. The UK can similarly benefit from adopting evidence-led strategies and structured investigative frameworks.

Moving forward: an urgent call to action

In the UK, the 21st century demands a new paradigm for understanding wildland fire. Climate change is critical, but it does not act alone. Wildfire is also a function of politics, culture, infrastructure, psychology, and deliberate human action. The UK must invest in specialized wildfire investigative capacity, develop formal training programs, promote international knowledge exchange, and embed wildfire cause analysis into national resilience planning; this will support government departments and partner organizations in preventing, protecting against, responding to and recovering from wildfires that are increasingly becoming part of the UK’s annual risk cycle, many of which are influenced by anthropogenic factors.

Most importantly, wildfires must be treated not only as environmental disasters but as events that can involve deliberate human intent.

Rhodri Jones is a fire sector professional with 18 years operational, fire safety, investigative and project management experience gained within the UK and international fire and rescue services. He now works as a government scientist for the UK civil service in the Health & Safety Executive as the technical team lead for fire safety. Jones has been pioneering the concept of wildfire investigation in the UK and in 2023 produced a wildfire investigation report for the UK Forestry Commission, which examines the UK causes of wildfires and how the UK can improve its wildfire investigation capability.

One foot in the black – an off-season journey

Participants in WRTEX Mexico, the first delivery of the program in Latin America. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik

By Silvie Fojtik

The following is a photo essay chronicling my travels to Latin America from November 2024 through February 2025.

I work a seasonal job in wildfire; generally, this is in the months of February through October in the Northern Hemisphere.

In the off season, while some lock into their skis and patrol the local hill or undertake rites of passage on their respective journeys to self-discovery through recreational foreign adventures, I kept one foot in the black.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

The winter of 2024-25 was particularly fruitful, with an organic unfolding of fire opportunities in Latin America that kept me busy until I stepped back into my regular position in Smithers, British Columbia, as a wildfire assistant – an officer role – for the Cassiar Zone, the furthest northwest region of the province, its borders abutting Yukon and Alaska.

My venture south began in Mexico, where I participated in the first Latin American WTREX (Women in Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange). I later went to Costa Rica for a couple of training events for local wildland firefighters. I ended the trip witnessing the tail end of a historic fire that threatened the town of El Bolsón, Argentina.

In 2023, largely due to my intermediate proficiency in Spanish, I was tasked as liaison to a contingent of 100 Costa Rican firefighters deployed to British Columbia and various single resource fireline roles in conjunction with Mexican Unit Crews. That experience and growing frequency of inter-agency resource sharing emphasized the benefits of better understanding fuel, terrain, and operations in Canada’s visiting partner countries, not to mention continuing to improve my Spanish.

These trips were of a personal nature, not funded nor representing my employer.

Mexico’s WTREX

November 4-15, 2024 | Jalisco, Mexico

Nancy Gonzalez and Ceci Portillo, Mexico, at the 2024 WTREX burn at Jalisco. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik.
Nancy Gonzalez and Ceci Portillo, Mexico, at the 2024 WTREX burn at Jalisco. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik.

Women-in-fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange is under the same auspices as TREX, typically a two-week event combining in-class and field portions related to prescribed burning and forming collaborative experiential training around good fire. TREXs are managed under the arm of Fire Networks, largely coordinated by staff from The Nature Conservancy, Watershed Research and Training Center, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, now taking on international reach with events across the globe.

This was the first WTREX delivery in Latin America with more than 35 participants from 11 countries, spearheaded by Yesica Garcia, based in Jalisco and inspired by her participation in the 2023 South Africa WTREX. Garcia was the incident commander whilst being, impressively, eight months pregnant.

Lenya Quinn-Davidson, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Fire Network and lead on Fire Network’s WTREX, attended the first half. We had technical officers from Mexico, Spain, Chile, the United States, and Ecuador; operational staff from Portugal, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Honduras; and a high official from Peru working on establishing his country’s wildfire management program.

The primary base for the event was Agua Brava training centre, near Guadalajara; during my stay I found out it was the defining training grounds for a visionary, longstanding partnership between the Mexican state of Jalisco and Canadian province of Alberta. In the mid 2000s, Jalisco firefighters were embedded in Alberta’s provincial fire crews for the duration of the season; some were further trained in operational single resource roles. Several of these participants now undertake critical agency representation (AREP) roles while on deployments to Canada with high proficiency in English and a deep understanding of Canadian fire operations. The program was paired down to a regular resource sharing agreement around mid 2010s.

1st SINAC Women’s Wildland Firefighter Camp

January 16-19, 2025

Cabo Blanco Absolute Nature Reserve, Costa Rica

I was invited as speaker and instructor to Costa Rica’s first women-devoted firefighting camp. In a rare occurrence, the camp was held over three days in one of Costa Rica’s national reserves closed to public. The event was funded by the Canadian embassy through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.

The nation’s is mostly characterized by surface fires as the predominant deciduous stands drop their leaves by summer’s heat. Some introduced coniferous stands do exist.

Costa Rica is building a growing contingent of skilled select individuals across several agencies; many are being trained specifically for the prerequisites necessary for Canadian deployments, some having as many as three back-to-back seasons in Canada’s boreal under their belts.

There are a select few wildfire trained personnel among the structural firefighters in Costa Rica.

The country’s administrative body responsible for conservation areas, SINAC (Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación), has crews comprising regular park staff and local volunteers, both generally responding within their designated jurisdictions.

The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC) made a reconnaissance visit to Costa Rica in 2019 and a memorandum of understanding and operations plan were signed on Oct. 19, 2021, with SINAC.

The third main player in the wildland sector in Costa Rica, the engine behind the dispatch and organizing of the deployments, is an NGO closely tied to SINAC called Pro Parques, nimbly able to mobilize finances and resources rapidly.

A joint effort between Carolina Orozco, a SINAC officer and member of the first contingent to Canada in 2023, and Pro Parques executive director Rocío Echeverri, helped to spearhead this first women-specific fire training event.

Maria Luisa Alfaro explaining basic fireline operations. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik
Maria Luisa Alfaro explaining basic fireline operations. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik

It was an honour to also be in the presence of Costa Rica’s Luisa Alfaro, a powerhouse I had the fortune to meet. For decades, Alfaro has been a lead consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in emergency management in Latin America; she started a mission 24 years ago to knock on every country’s governing office to establish the incident command system (ICS) Latin America wide. A 2017 post by USAID celebrated Luisa’s contributions and boasted about the more than 20,000 firefighters trained by Luisa!

Ade Brica Volunteer Brigade

NWCG S-190 – Intro to fire behaviour

January 25, 2025 | Tamarindo, Costa Rica

With a week off between events, Renee Jack, one of the instructors at the SINAC women’s camp rounded up an opportunity for a volunteer fire brigade – led by the fierce born and bred local, Natalia García – to experience a day of basic fire certification. I supported García’s instructional minimally and largely captured photos for her reporting needs. I first met Nati at the WTREX in Mexico, earlier in November, and again during the women’s camp – another example of the immeasurable benefits of these international events.

Renee Jack, a USFS fire program specialist, conducting an exam with a local fire brigade, which gathers every Saturday to train and develop local projects such as strategic fuel breaks near Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik
Renee Jack, a USFS fire program specialist, conducting an exam with a local fire brigade, which gathers every Saturday to train and develop local projects such as strategic fuel breaks near Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Photo: Sylvie Fojtik

Renee is a fire program specialist for United States Forest Service international program; her gentle poise reflects her multi-decade career in fire from smokejumper to high-level operational roles, through to the international realm of training and emergency response.

Nati’s father established ADE Brica to address a gap in response coverage in the community and, notably, an area more prone to fires, as the northwest finds itself drier than the rest of Costa Rica. Impressively, most Saturdays are dedicated to the local volunteer brigades; some days were spent cutting and digging a fire break for the community of Tamarindo or training, like on that one January weekend.

Historic WUI Wildfire “Confluencia” 3’892ha

February 14-24, 2025 | El Bolsón, Argentina

On Jan. 30, 2025, a historic fire ignited north of El Bolsón, taking a nine-kilometre run west through the neighbouring community, burning more than 1000 hectares the first day. Despite united efforts among farm landowners with slip tanks, structural engines, and wildland firefighters, the fire advanced for the next 72 hours, resulting in one fatality, 200 structures lost and 900 people evacuated. SPLIF, Rio Negro’s provincial wildfire agency, coordinated mutual-aid response.

After two days without sleep, navigating airports and red-eye flights, I arrived in El Bolsón. With no time to spare, by morning, I was immediately integrated into a local squad, finally getting a chance to join the fireline with friends I made the previous year, learning their techniques, fuel types, and fire behaviour, and attempting to infuse some fresh energy to an already exhausted crew.

The Confluencia fire was on the heels of several multi-thousand-hectare fires that had been burning in and around neighbouring provinces. By the time I arrived on Feb.13, the flashy pressing flames had abated due to some favourable weather and many outside agencies had begun to disperse. Significant work remained in buttoning up the perimeter of Bolsón’s almost 4000-hectare fire.

For some, this fire had meant 23 days straight on this fire alone (some had been supporting neighbouring fire incidents and were quickly diverted to defend Bolsón), not to mention several 20- to 30-hour shifts at its inception. In addition to agency fire crews, various military entities and structural fire crews mobilized from across the country.

Argentina has a robust wildfire management program at three levels of administration with a framework established for both prevention and suppression at each agency level.

In the early 2000s, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) – now dissolved and part of Global Affairs Canada – funded a multi-year program to bolster Argentina’s wildfire management program, primarily in prevention. Canada’s fire weather indices (FWI) was adopted.

The senior officer at the local base recalls two Hercules landing from British Columbia filled with suppression equipment. Imprints of this 25-year-old collaboration are still present in the people I met, and equipment found on the fireline.

I crossed paths with a Canadian faller who recalled the time a group of Argentinians came to shadow his crew while he was a supervisor for BC’s Trailblazer Unit Crew. The BC hallmark Mark 3 pump red toolboxes can still be found in Argentina’s national park inventory and on the line.

Some anecdotes point to the introduction of Douglas fir in the 1950s in the province of Chubut, but a more concerted national push for the introduction of lodgepole pine, Ponderosa pine and Monterey pine occurred in the 1970s with associated subsidies in an ironic effort to build an effective logging industry under the auspices of saving the native species.

These conifers proved to be far more aggressive, exhibiting more impressive growth than in their local habitat. Far more alarming is the trees’ immediate dense colonization post fire, exacerbating the situation. The confluence of changing climactic conditions (drought and increased frequency of lightning) and loaded landscape-scale invasive pines is forming a dire situation in Patagonia, requiring an aggressive adaptation to the devastating ecological impacts and increased wildfire urban interface threats.

WTREX Quijota

April 13-24, 2026 | Castilla-La-Mancha, Spain

María Ángeles Romero and Gloria Sánchez López (see photo below) lived a transformative experience as participants of the Mexican WTREX and dedicated the last 1.5 years organizing the inaugural Spanish WTREX: WTREX Quijota, in the arid landscape dotted with wind mills that inspired Cervantes’ classic novel Don Quixote.

Fifteen countries were represented (Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, Mexico, Canada, the United States, Peru, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Honduras and Guatemala) in an immersive two-week event filled with workshops, presentations, multiple prescribed burns of pine-oak forests, and cultural visits from vineyards to cheese makers.

Spain was a perfect backdrop with its widely established prescribed burn and prevention programs in addition to suppression, international emergency response reach, and leader in technical innovations. The presence of local experts smoothly facilitated both the training and burn operations.

The WTREX model transcends a typical sanitized public confluence to break barriers and build a stronger, more intimate team of diverse individuals, boosting confidence and flow of insights and learnables. The impacts are continuous and immeasurable in a world with expanding need for international collaboration.

Silvie Fojtik

Born to Czech parents in Switzerland, Silvie Fojtik’s family emigrated to Canada when she was two years old. Thus began her eclectic, diverse exposure and multidisciplinary life into arts, sciences, engineering and outdoor adventure. The latest explorations coalesced into a trajectory in wildfires, starting in 2017, bouncing between contracting companies, provincial and National Park fire crews and currently for BC Wildfire Services. When Covid restrictions prevented furthering her scuba diving certifications she invested her savings into her first mirrorless digital camera system instead. This unearthed a deeply seated, buried passion for the creative arts.

From forest to front door – understanding wildfire spread into communities

Researchers burn an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in a controlled test, to study the impacts of wildfire. (Image courtesy Michael Gollner)

By Ty Burke

As California’s population boomed — from 10 million in 1950 to over 40 million today — the number of people living in fire-prone areas multiplied. Over the decades, millions of new homes and commercial buildings sprang up to accommodate the needs of the state’s growing population, and many of those structures stand in areas prone to wildfires.

As a result, more communities are now in harm’s way. The 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles show exactly how destructive urban wildfires can be. More than 16,000 buildings were destroyed, and 31 people lost their lives. By the time the recovery is complete, the cost of repairing the damage from those wildfires could approach a quarter of a trillion dollars.

This article appeared in Berkeley Engineer magazine, Summer 2026

“We are front and center in the wildfire crisis,” says Michael Gollner, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. “California is beautiful, but everything aligns for fires here. We need to learn to adapt, to limit the damage that wildfires cause. A lot of people live in fire-prone areas, and most of the country’s major urban wildfire disasters have happened in California.”

Despite the thousands of wildfires in California each year, we still don’t know that much about them — especially when it comes to how they spread in urban areas. The wildland-urban interface is the zone in which buildings and infrastructure border natural areas. Homes in this zone are at higher risk of burning, but quantifying that risk is challenging.

Until recently, the mathematical models used to predict wildfire spread largely ignored these areas. Where a simulated wildfire reached a developed community, the models treated the land as unburnable. Which, of course, it’s not.

“Understanding fire spread between built structures is a totally different equation than understanding fire spread in wildlands,” says Gollner. “It’s different physics, and until recently, it was not well enough understood to be integrated into the parameters of mathematical models. We still can’t do everything at scale, but we’ve begun to be able to simulate wildfires in urban areas.”

In the wildland-urban interface, fires will move freely between natural landscapes and developed lands. And the 2025 Palisades fire did exactly that. What began in the brush of the Santa Monica Mountains swept through residential neighborhoods in Pacific Palisades, before it crossed Mandeville Canyon and burned other parts of Greater Los Angeles. But predicting, and ultimately slowing, this kind of fire behavior remains a complex problem.

“To make good decisions about the risks communities face, we need more science,” Gollner says.

Professor Michael Gollner with a fire whirl in his lab. (Photo by Adam Lau/UC Berkeley Engineering)
Professor Michael Gollner with a fire whirl in his lab. (Photo by Adam Lau/UC Berkeley Engineering)

Evolving science for a changing landscape

The increase in wildfires tearing through California communities isn’t just due to population growth. Historically, much of California burned every 7–15 years, a natural process that thinned forests and removed accumulated ground fuel.

“It’s actually restorative,” says Scott Stephens, a professor in the Rausser College of Natural Resources. These periodic fires created forests that were more fire resistant. Over time, California’s forests came to be dominated by fire- and drought-resistant pine trees, which shade the forest floor.

But a century of fire suppression policies and logging has changed the composition of our forests. As many of the largest pines were felled, forests grew thicker and less fire-resistant tree species flourished. Now, California’s forests are much more flammable than they once were.

“The effects have been profound,” says Stephens. “The fires we have today would have been unimaginable 50 years ago. In California, we put out more than 98% of wildfires, but the 2% that we can’t put out are responsible for burning 95% of the land.”

And the amount of land that has burned in California is mind-bending: more than 12 million acres since 2013. That’s an area more than twice the size of New Jersey. The damage hasn’t been confined to forests and chapparal, but has also torn through some of California’s largest cities.

As wildfires push into urban areas, they behave in ways scientists are only beginning to understand. But Gollner is figuring out how to predict what urban wildfires will do next — by turning fire modeling into a complex, evolving problem.

“There are so many things that go into modeling a fire; you need to account for the weather, the fuel chains and the fire itself,” Gollner says. “We are working on how to do those calculations for urban areas, but there are so many unknowns and uncertainties. Sometimes, we are just revealing what those uncertainties are. Other times, we are starting to put numbers to them.”

In research published in 2024, Gollner developed a landscape-scale model for predicting the spread of fire in the wildland-urban interface. Unlike other models that existed at the time, Gollner’s addressed the spread of wildfire through both vegetation and buildings.

“Other models treated them separately, but ours seamlessly couples the two,” says Dwi Marhaendro Jati Purnomo, a post-doctoral scholar in Gollner’s lab who led the development of the model. “It’s driven by the key mechanisms of fire spread in the wildland-urban interface: direct flame contact, radiation and firebrands — airborne pieces of burning material that are responsible for igniting many of the buildings that burn in wildfires. Our modeling framework also incorporates heat flux — the amount of heat that travels through materials. That allows us to quantify the hazard to nearby houses.”

Gollner and Purnomo tested their model using data from two highly destructive events from California’s recent past — the 2017 Tubbs and Thomas fires. And they were able to fine-tune the model to make predictions with a high degree of accuracy. Their model predicted the extent of the fires with more than 85% accuracy and the number of damaged houses with roughly 70% accuracy. Importantly, the researchers found that nearly a third of house ignitions were caused by embers, something ordinary Californians can take meaningful steps to guard against.

“There are two basic types of mitigation. The first is defensible space — basically clearing flammable things away from a house and reducing the amount of fuel available to a fire,” says Gollner. “The other is to harden a house, to make it more difficult for the building to ignite by changing the windows and siding or by installing ember-resistant vents. These are simple-ish things, but hardening a house can be expensive.”

Fire-resistant siding is made of non-combustible materials like stucco or metal, and installing it in a new build doesn’t cost that much more than traditional wooden siding does. But the costs of replacing the siding on existing houses can be high, especially when you multiply those costs across millions of houses. Gollner’s modeling is helping identify in which areas this type of mitigation will have the greatest impact.

“That’s the billion-dollar question,” he says. “We don’t have all the tools yet, but we do know that if you did all these things and have good spacing between your house and your neighbour’s house, you will be way better protected. But it takes money and time, so there is a question of exactly how much needs to be done. A house right next to the forest? Sure, we need to do that. But how far into a community do these mitigations need to go? We still don’t know exactly in which areas these investments will have the biggest payout.”

Developing a playbook to fight fire in urban areas

Gollner’s ultimate goal is to craft a playbook for wildfires that communities can use to protect themselves. Right now, there isn’t one. But Gollner’s work to quantify wildfire risk is giving communities the data they need to set priorities. And one of the communities doing that is Berkeley.

“Berkeley is in a fire-prone landscape,” he says. “We had major fires in 1991 and 1923, and we have mostly forgotten about them. But the weather conditions that happened during those fires will happen again; we just don’t know when those conditions will occur.”

Even the tiniest spark can generate an inferno, he adds. And whether one does is largely a matter of luck. In the right conditions, a fire can spread rapidly. Right now, there’s little to stop a fire from spreading through the tightly packed wood-framed buildings that line Berkeley’s narrow streets.

“How destructive a fire is depends a lot on the direction and the timing of the winds,” Gollner says. “If the winds only last a few hours, the fire might stop, but when a wildfire is raging at peak intensity, there is just not a lot that humans can do about it.”

When a wildfire enters a city, it sends embers flying everywhere, and they can ignite buildings by the thousands. No fire department in the world can handle a hundred burning buildings, much less a thousand, and no amount of investment in firefighting will allow us to extinguish urban fires on this scale.

“There is just no way to tackle this problem with an active approach,” says Gollner. “We need to limit the ways fire can spread. If we can do those simple things, we can make a difference.”

But you need to get people on board, and that isn’t always easy. In January 2026, the City of Berkeley implemented an ordinance called Effective Mitigations for Berkeley Ember Resilience (EMBER). It mandates a five-foot vegetation-free buffer zone around houses and also identifies areas at the highest risk from wildfires as priorities for enforcement. 

Under EMBER, fines for non-compliance can reach up to $500 per day, and some local opponents have argued that EMBER is overly intrusive. But Gollner’s research highlights the value of defensible space. In a paper published in 2025, he found that houses with a five-foot, vegetation-free buffer were much less likely to be destroyed in a wildfire.

Gollner conducted a machine learning analysis of data collected on the ground after five major historical fires in California’s wildland-urban interface — the 2017 Tubbs, 2017 Thomas, 2018 Camp, 2019 Kincade and 2020 Glass fires — and found that houses with a vegetation-free buffer area were much more likely to survive a wildfire. The difference is stark. Just 20% of houses without a buffer survived these wildfires, while 37% of houses with a buffer did. In a major urban wildfire, that 17% difference could add up to hundreds or even thousands of houses saved.

“Clearing the vegetation that is closest to the house isn’t perfect, but it is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to reduce risk,” Gollner says. “The vegetation that’s right there has the highest likelihood of igniting a house. But people can be really protective of their plants, and some people are just opposed to doing it.”

But retired fire chief Dave Winnacker is using the data to convince people of the value in compliance. Winnacker spent about 20 years in the fire service in Fresno, Alameda County and the Moraga-Orinda Fire District. And now, he’s returned to his hometown of Berkeley to help the city implement EMBER.

“Dr. Gollner’s research has really given Berkeley a theoretical grounding to operationalize this initiative,” says Winnacker.

In the same 2025 paper, Gollner calculated that implementing both house hardening and defensible space could prevent the loss of 52% of all the structures lost in the major urban wildfires he studied.

“Fire is opportunistic,” Winnacker says. “And it will find a way to spread. But when you take mitigation measures, communities won’t burn. In the last 20 years, 80,000 homes in California burned, give or take. Halving that number to 40,000 homes still would not be great. But it sure would be a lot better than 80,000.”


When more people adopt defensible space and harden their houses, the effect is amplified. Each house that doesn’t burn breaks a chain of ignitions — it means fewer houses burn overall. That’s a message that Winnacker has taken to the public.

“Urban fire is a big macro-phenomenon, and it is hard for people to connect the dots between these micro-mitigations, which can seem inconsequential, and this huge destructive thing,” Winnacker says. “But Dr. Gollner’s work allows us to do that. It helps us understand the drivers of loss in the urban environment. And from there, we can prioritize mitigations, so that we get the greatest value from a risk reduction standpoint. Otherwise, we would just be guessing.”

Smoke travels from one accessory dwelling unit to another during a controlled burn experiment. (Image courtesy Michael Gollner)
Smoke travels from one accessory dwelling unit to another during a controlled burn experiment. (Image courtesy Michael Gollner)

Read more on this research in the Berkeley Engineer.

Volunteer Handline Crews Model Gains Traction as Wildfires Increase in Germany

By Jan Sudmersen and Detlef Maushake

Germany is a little smaller than California but has almost twice as many people, about 84 million. Though the country is densely populated and industrialized in large areas, about 30 per cent is defined as forest land – half the trees are conifers – and 50 per cent of Germany’s land mass is used for agriculture. There is a lot of vegetation.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

SITREP Germany

A first glance at available data shows no real wildfire problem in Germany, but the country faces more wildfires and an increase in fire intensity. In addition, wildfires on military ranges with unexploded explosive ordinance (UXO) contamination from two world wars and the training areas used during the Cold War create significant problems.

Fires on UXO-contaminated areas are difficult to fight considering that ground forces must stay away 1000 meters from the fire because of the imminent risk of exploding UXOs; the use of aircraft is hampered by the high altitude at which they must fly, for the same reason.

The long-lasting drought from 2018 to today – which resulted 2022 being the first real fire season in Germany with several large campaign fires – has led to predictions that the fire regime and fire behavior from the Mediterranean areas will extend slowly but steadily north in the next 20 to 30 years or even sooner.

Wildfires on military ranges with unexploded explosive ordinance (UXO) contamination from two world wars and the training areas used during the Cold War create significant problems. Photo: Jan Südmersen, @fire and Detlev Maushake, WAldbrandteam.

In Germany, fire suppression is generally provided by municipal fire departments. Beside the armed forces fire service there are no federal- or state-owned fire resources due to Germany being decentralized by the allies after the Second World War.

Most fire departments are volunteer – there are about one million volunteer firefighters and just 30,000 paid firefighters in Germany. There are also 330,000 members of the Jugendfeuerwehr, fire explorers for young people from age 10 to 16.

 Wildland fire tactics rely heavily on the use of fire engines and tenders, of which there are 40,000 in Germany; specialized brush trucks are still rare and not standardized. The use of handlines exceeding the capability of water shuttle operations is one of the main reasons firefighters lose a lot of battles.

A new training curriculum was put together by a working group over four years that offers guidance in the use of LACES (Lookouts, Anchor Points, Communication, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones) and safe tactics as a base for the general firefighter in Germany.

Regarding air operations, there is only one fixed wing (a PZL 18 Dromader on seasonal contract in one county) and helicopters must be ordered from the army, police or contractors – if they are available, and even if they are, there may be a two-to-six-hour response time. The same applies to heavy equipment such as dozers, which are not commonly used or even considered by incident commanders.

The concept of an autonomous working handcrew is not known to the German fire service so far, because there are simply none (yet). Although many fire departments purchase hand tools such as Pulaskis and combination tools like the Gorgui, members are not sufficiently trained to cut handlines for a prolonged time, and there is no utilization of tactical fire.

Volunteer handcrews?

Predicting the need for specialized units such as handcrews, the non-profit @fire was founded in 2002, followed by Waldbrandteam in 2015; both are non-governmental, independent organizations. The founding teams collected a lot of experience and knowledge from internships with several handcrews and fire services in the United States, Canada and southern Europe.

Coming from outside the traditional fire services (even though the majority of the members in both NGOs are firefighters too), we were mostly considered rogues in the beginning; this did not stop us from continuous networking and providing wildland fire training for hundreds of fire departments (there was no specialized wildland fire training available until 2020), which resulted in more acceptance and integration. Both organizations built an international network, trained members according to international standards such as those of the US-based National Wildfire Coordinating Group, and sent them on internships to gain experience – without any federal funding and by 100 per cent volunteering. Both NGOs have the status of fully accepted civil protection measures by German law.

During the 2022 fire season our NGO-handcrews were requested for several deployments, which clearly pointed out the need for specialized handcrews in Germany. Feedback from the fire departments working with the NGOs on the 2022 fires was positive given the fact that the work was in conjunction with local resources and that the experience was also for training and an exchange of experiences.

Capacity building is beginning

In the aftermath of the 2022 fires, things started to shift. Being Germans, the focus was on purchasing specialized fire trucks, a discussion that resulted in a new variety of brush fire trucks based on the French medium forest fire tanker trucks, but again with no nationwide standardization.

Finally, post-2022, some fire departments started to build specialized units similar to handcrews, following the example of the NGOs. Being asked for advice and training for these units, Waldbrandteam and @fire developed and published a guideline for handcrew capacity building https://www. at-fire.de/veroeffentlichung/fachempfehlung-loeschmannschaften/ (Fachempfehlung Löschmannschaften).

Applying National Wildfire Coordinating Group standards adapted to the German and European setting, we defined two types of handcrews: Type A and B.

Type A handcrews mainly support engine crews with long-distance hoselays and mop-up operations. The idea is that these crews are widespread regional teams organized and founded at the county level with limited training and equipment, so that they are easy to build and to maintain.

Type B handcrews are essentially copies of National Wildfire Coordinating Group Type II Initial Attack crews made for working autonomously, nationwide and even internationally. This requires:

•             Adapting fitness standards (pack test, work capacity test)

•             Language capabilities (everybody must speak English)

•             (Online) NWCG courses: NWCG S-100/130/190/270/ L-180, S-211 and S-212

•             Field days or even weeks depending on the level of expertise and training to harden the knowledge

•             Personal gear including a line pack

•             International deployment preparedness (vaccines, cultural awareness, safety and security)

•             Building a tool and logistics cache

•             Being self-sufficient for at least 24 hours

•             Training with their own tools, but also knowing tactics and tools in Europe

Both @fire and Waldbrandteam are in the process of establishing Type B handcrews.

Type A handcrews mainly support engine crews with long-distance hoselays and mop-up operations. Photo: Jan Südmersen, @fire and Detlev Maushake, WAldbrandteam.

What’s next?

Type A handcrews: There is a growing number of fire departments interested in building Type As. The NGOs, @fire and Waldbrandteam, are building a network, mentoring, and training these new crews. Both organizations are also supporting state fire academies, forestry units and helicopter companies in establishing specialized training to work with the handcrews.

Type B handcrews: The NGOs can deploy their own Type B crew, or a combined crew from both @fire and Waldbrandteam. There is some discussion about

incorporating and cooperating with qualified personnel from larger fire departments and applying to become a certified module of the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism.

Besides funding, the biggest challenge in building the handcrews is to provide (volunteer) members with firsthand training, and then to gain experience on the fireline. It is very difficult to explain the idea and goals plus the structure of the NGO crews to governmental agencies abroad. Often the combination of the terms NGO and volunteers lead to a break in communications and the misunderstanding that that there is a lack of professionalism due to this combination.

 A big step forward was the signing of a memorandum of understanding with CalFire in 2024; @fire was given the opportunity to attend classes and send some members to internship with various handcrews.

At this point, the NGOs are reaching out to the international wildland fire community looking for more possibilities for training and internships.

A model for other nations?

Seeing the numbers in Germany you might think that there is a deep conflict between paid and volunteer firefighters, because if you have enough volunteers, you just don’t need paid firefighters.

Honestly, we can’t claim that conflict doesn’t exist. But, beside our passion for wildland fire fighting, we both are members of paid and volunteer fire departments and from our experience, we regularly see the synergy of those systems working together. Not only are volunteer fire departments very successful at providing fire protection for most German communities, but there is also a large number of combined fire departments, where paid firefighters provide the initial response and volunteer firefighters provide manpower at bigger events and specialized units with backup for the full-time, career firefighters. It works!

Transferred to wildland fire

Beside using volunteers in supporting roles, volunteer handcrews – well trained (to the same standards!) and led by experienced crew captains – could be valuable assets in initial attacks and structure defence, especially in large-scale events or intense fire seasons where resources are stretched.

Volunteers are not a substitute for paid, full-time crews because of their limited availability and limited deployment length of 24 to 72 hours.

We are aware that there are many more points for or against this idea, so we invite you to open your mind and discuss it.

What would Ben Franklin (or, in Germany, Conrad Magirus) think of implementing volunteer handcrews to protect their communities?

Jan Südmersen is division chief for the City of Osnabrück Fire Department and the founder of @fire Germany.

Detlef Maushake is a captain with the City of Salzgitter Fire Department and the founder of Waldbrandteam. Maushake was the recipient of the 2019 IAWF Firebreak Award for Excellence in Wildfire Management.

Force multipliers – understanding the Forest Service’s Administratively Determined militia

By Michael Scott Hill

While being briefed pre-season on changes to the wildfire staff for U.S. federal resource agencies, I realized that many people don’t understand the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service and Department of Interior AD system.

We’re called ADs but few people realize the acronym stands for Administratively Determined; we’re the hidden resource of federal fire response, the steady backbone that helps to staff federal resource agencies on emergencies year after year. ADs are managed by local federal administrative units but deployed to assist on federal responses to nationwide emergency events.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

Background

In the early days of the Forest Service’s responses to local wildfires and other emergencies, employees were often required to wear two hats. One of the hats was a person’s primary job, such as being a ranger or forester; the other role was crew boss or fire engine operator.

The Forest Service was young and many of its remote offices were far from each other. At times, extra help would be hired and brought from nearby communities to assist with fire emergencies; the extra personnel were released from employment once the need passed.

This loose emergency-responder militia structure, with its ability to swell by accessing the Forest Service’s professional but non-fire workforce and then bring in contract people quickly afterwards, is unique. Having worked around other international fire agencies and the military in Afghanistan, my sense is that the flexible fire-response militia is a hidden strength for the Forest Service and its related federal agencies with wildfire response commitments.

Neither the US military nor other international fire agencies can deploy such an efficient, low-paid workforce, coiled and ready to respond at a moment’s notice, to the range of wildfire and national emergencies to which the Forest Service’s ADs respond and then quickly fade back into the civilian landscape. Indeed, even US National Guard members do not deploy as frequently as the federal ADs, nor do they face the range or volume of risks that ADs regularly experience.

Who are they?

The idea of an AD workforce that is deployed then quickly released when no longer needed is built on a labor force supply of retired, or separated, federal employees who maintain their federal response qualifications.

Many people believe all ADs are retired employees with full federal retirement benefits; some ADs fit that description. However, others who became ADs had left their federal employment for various reasons then began working as ADs, making annual salaries of only tens of thousands of dollars, with no retirement or other benefits from the Forest Service or its sister federal agencies, while being sent to the front lines of federal emergencies more often than most US military units.

I have been in the AD ranks for years and have helped to save countless communities and lives from wildfires; I’ve also served with US military forces overseas in war zones. I have seen how US military service members are honored for taking sometimes only a fraction of the risks experienced each summer by many ADs and other federal forces, who are on call for the Forest Service, risking their lives and potentially damaging their health during national emergencies.

The official guidance for land management agencies supports AD hiring to:

1. Cope with a sudden and unexpected emergency caused by a fire, or extreme fire potential, flood, storm, or any other all-hazard emergency that threatens damage to federally protected property, has the potential to cause loss of life, serious injury, public health risk, or damage to natural or cultural resources unless brought under immediate control.

2. Provide emergency assistance to states under formalized agreements.

3. Meet mission assignments issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

How are ADs used?

ADs fill in seamlessly at the side of federal and state employees on the front line of federal disaster responses. ADs staff many federal incident management teams organized to provide leadership in emergency response. ADs manage firefighting crews, conduct federal aviation operations, and fill in elsewhere, often having advanced skills and qualifications.

ADs face the flames and other dangers including floodwaters, often right next to the active federal employees but without the security net of retirement benefits, job protections or decent annual salaries, while cumulative health damage takes its toll on the future quality of our lives.

Why do we do it?

Being an AD has its benefits. As temporary on-call federal employees, ADs can feel part of the federal emergency response force while still going about our normal lives and finding regular employment. We are free to take assignments for which we are available, and we have the freedom to decline those for which we are not. We can use and hone skills and qualifications developed during lengthy careers in various aspects of federal emergency response. Many ADs enjoy the comradery of the work, the travel it offers, and the satisfaction of assisting during emergency responses.

Challenges

The Forest Service’s AD world has experienced challenges. In 2017, there was a push at the national level to terminate the ADs hired locally by USFS units, seemingly due to cultural changes as a new generation of management began to fill gaps left by Baby Boomer retirements. In response to this 2017 push, the USFS relationship with its ADs became formalized.

Post 2017, as ADs were a federally deployed national resource, some local AD managers began to view as unnecessary the extra work it took manage the ADs.

In some cases, local AD managers began to prune their AD ranks, even going outside federal polity to do so. As there is no mechanism for ADs to file complaints against their full-time federal managers, many ADs walked away. Because there is minimal employment protection for ADs, their sponsorship can easily be terminated, even after years of service.

During this era, policy was enacted requiring ADs to live in the same geographic location where they were sponsored by an AD unit. The policy, combined with the new management culture, resulted in the loss of many experienced ADs.

In some cases, managers have seemingly put personal projects ahead of long-practiced policy. One example was someone who wanted to make the fire ground safer and championed a formalized medical screening process for ADs to ensure they were fit enough to go to the firelines. In theory this was a great idea that could save lives. However, not all ADs have health insurance, and the screening policy resulted in the loss of many more good ADs.

Where from here?

There is talk within the Forest Service about reorganizations and staffing cuts. My purpose for writing this piece is to ensure ADs are not forgotten as the federal resource agency’s hidden force multipliers. ADs, with their knowledge and federal emergency qualifications, are and have long been a valuable part of the federal work force. I would argue that if the AD role remains during any reorganization of the US federal wildfire efforts, the framework of AD management in place since 2017 should be reviewed.

In my opinion, ADs should be offered some buffer as temporary federal employees so they can activate the federal grievance system if necessary. I also believe the geographic location hiring rule for ADs should be discarded, as ADs are used by the Forest Service at the national level.

Why does it matter?

Wildfire professionals who have given their lives to emergency response work – often at great personal cost – deserve respect, fairness, and procedural integrity. When experienced ADs can be dismissed with no avenue for review, it sends a message that dedication and expertise count for nothing. In an updated AD program that serves our national goals, former ADs who have been removed from the program should be able to have their AD sponsorships reviewed and renewed at a national level, as we are national resources.

In return for their call-when-needed roles, ADs should be provided pay, protections and allowances equal to the risks they undertake. Thus, we should consider the simplest solution – to make the federal AD program national, based under one umbrella, or convert the program from individual ADs into a group of federal contractors who are employed by private companies. Then all the above concerns can be covered within the contract.

The AD system is and has always been of tremendous value to the whole of the Forest Service and related agencies. It’s time this loyal workforce is better understood, recognized and valued.

Michael Hill, a longtime member of the Administratively Determined workforce of the United States federal fire responders and one of Wildfire magazine’s Associate Editors, manages a Chinook in California.

Weaving Palawa knowledge with Western science

Fire, in its essence, is about connecting people with place, past with future, ground to air. The 8th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference began today in Hobart, Tasmania with a Welcome to Country from Trawlwoolway man Todd Sculthorpe, who asked everyone to think about knowledge that respects and understands fire. Here is his Welcome to the 470 delegates.

Ya pulingina, hello and welcome.

My name is Todd Sculthorpe. I stand before you as a proud Trawlwoolway man, carrying a lineage that stretches back through my ancestors to Fanny Cochrane-Smith, and her parents Tanganutra and Nicerminic and their parents and so on. Their lives, their resilience, and their deep relationship with Country live on in me, and it is with that good spirit and with deep respect that I welcome you all here today to Nipaluna, Hobart.

This land was traditionally the lands of the Muwinina people, they cared for this country nestled between the feet of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington and the shores of Timtumili Minanya/the River Derwent. From as far down the southeastern coast to the Kingborough region and as far north as the Derwent valley they cared for country, introduced vital life-giving burning that has shaped this landscape. As a community we feel their absence deeply because with them went generations of cultural knowledge and a deep relationship with country. But they will not be forgotten by us the Palawa community and because of that they will continue to live on in our hearts and our intentions to respect and care for country.

I pay respects to my community the Palawa people, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, as the enduring custodians of this land Lutruwita. I pay my respects to our Elders past and present and to those that did not survive the impacts of invasion. I extend that respect to any first nations people here today, to your elders and families and all delegates and presenters.

You have come here as fire practitioners, scientists, land managers, thinkers, and knowledge holders from across the world. You have come to talk about fire, its behaviour, its fuels, its risks, its science. But here, on this island, fire is more than a phenomenon to be studied. It is a relationship. It is a language. It is a practice of care.

For Palawa people, fire has always been part of how we understand and live with Country. It is not something separate from us, it is something we move with, something we listen to, something we carry responsibility for.

When we speak about cultural burning, we are not simply speaking about a technique or a management strategy. We are speaking about a way of seeing the world, where fire is guided by knowledge passed down over tens of thousands of years. Knowledge built through observation, through story, through practice, and through deep, enduring connection.

Fire, in this sense, is not destructive. It is regenerative. It is purposeful. It is relational.

It clears, but it also reveals.

It burns, but it also heals.

It transforms, but it also connects.

And importantly, it is never applied in isolation, it is always part of a broader understanding of Country: the seasons, the winds, the animals, the plants, and the people.

In Lutruwita, our ancestors used fire carefully and intentionally. They read the landscape in ways that science is still catching up to, understanding when to burn, where to burn, and when to let Country rest. These practices shaped ecosystems over tens of thousands of years, creating mosaics of vegetation that greatly reduced the risk and intensity of wildfires and supported biodiversity.

Today, many of the landscapes you study, many of the fuel loads you model, are the result of disrupted relationships with fire. When cultural burning was interrupted, when people were removed from Country, fire did not disappear. It changed. It built up. It became something more dangerous, more unpredictable. And we have seen the impact of this not just here in Lutruwita and not just in Australia but globally.

And that brings me to where we find ourselves now.

We are living in a time where fire is increasingly framed as a global crisis. We see it in the headlines, megafires, unprecedented seasons, landscapes burning with an intensity and scale that challenges our systems and our understanding.

But perhaps what we are really seeing is not just a fire problem, but a relationship problem.

A disconnection.

A forgetting.

A loss of balance between people, fire, and Country.

If I can offer a metaphor, think of the world right now as a landscape carrying a heavy fuel load. Not just physical fuels, but social, political, and environmental tensions. Climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, conflict, all of these are like dry tinder accumulating over time.

And when the right, or perhaps we should say the wrong, conditions come together, those tensions can ignite. Sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly. Sometimes in ways we expect, and often in ways we don’t.

We are living in a time of unpredictable ignition.

And just like wildfire, once something starts, it can spread rapidly, crossing boundaries, overwhelming systems, and challenging our ability to respond.

But we know, from fire, that unpredictability does not mean uncontrollability.

It means we need deeper understanding.

It means we need better relationships.

It means we need to pay attention to the conditions we are creating.

And that is why conferences like this matter.

Because just as fire moves across landscapes, knowledge must move across communities.

You have come together here, from different countries, disciplines, and perspectives, to share what you know. To respectfully challenge each other. To learn. To innovate.

And in that coming together, there is great strength.

But I would encourage you to think about this not just as an exchange of information, but as an opportunity to build relationships, relationships with each other, and relationships with the places you work.

Because knowledge without relationship can only take us so far.

Todd Sculthorpe, Aboriginal Trawlwoolway man from Tasmania, welcoming delegates to the 2026 International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference.

Cultural burning teaches us that the most important question is not just “How do we burn?” but “Why do we burn?” and “Who are we in relation to this place?”

It asks us to slow down.

To observe.

To listen.

To be guided, not just by data, but by responsibility.

And it reminds us that fire is not just a tool, it is a teacher.

Here in Lutruwita, we are in a time of renewal. There is a growing recognition of the importance of cultural burning practices, and a re-emergence of Aboriginal leadership in caring for Country. But this work is not about going backwards, it is about bringing together knowledge systems.

To offer another cultural analogy,

It is about weaving.

Weaving together Palawa knowledge and Western science.

Weaving together long-term observation and modern technology.

Weaving together community, policy, and practice.

And like any weaving, it requires care, patience, and respect.

Because not all threads are the same.

Not all knowledge is held in the same way.

And not all voices have been equally heard.

So as you move through this conference, I invite you to think about what you are contributing to that weave.

What knowledge are you bringing?

What knowledge are you open to receiving?

And how are you ensuring that the relationships you build here are grounded in respect and reciprocity?

Because the challenges we face, whether they are wildfires, climate change, or broader global uncertainties, cannot be addressed by any one group alone.

They require collective effort.

They require humility.

They require us to recognise that no single system of knowledge holds all the answers.

Fire, in its essence, is about connection.

It connects the ground to the air.

It connects the past to the future.

It connects people to place.

And in many ways, this conference is a fire in itself, a coming together of energy (physical and intellectual) and potential.

So, my question or my challenge if you will indulge me is, what will you do with that energy?

Will it burn quickly and fade?

Or will it be tended carefully, like a cultural burn, creating space for new growth, strengthening connections, and leaving the landscape healthier than before?

That choice sits with all of us.

Before I close, I want to return to where I began, with my ancestors.

Fanny Cochrane, Tanganutra, Nicerminic.

They lived through times of immense change, upheaval, and loss. They witnessed the disruption of Country and culture in ways that are difficult to fully comprehend. And yet, through them, knowledge endured.

Connection endured.

Responsibility endured.

I stand here because of that endurance.

And I speak to you today with that same sense of responsibility, to ensure that what we pass on to future generations is not a landscape of crisis, but a landscape of care and of respect.

A landscape where fire is understood, respected, and used wisely.

A landscape where knowledge is shared, not siloed.

A landscape where people come together, not just in times of emergency, but in ongoing relationship.

So in that spirit of care and respect, I welcome you to Nipaluna.

I welcome you to Lutruwita.

I welcome you to this gathering.

May your time here be meaningful.

May your conversations be respectful.

May your learning be deep.

And may the knowledge you carry forward help create a better, more balanced relationship with fire and with the world we all share.

Nayri nina-tu (thank you).

A perfect match

By Eric Everson

This mentoring program connects a mentor and mentee with a shared birthday, and a common desire to help colleagues. The outcome was an online resource for the greater wildfire community.

I recently had the good fortune of taking part in the International Association of Wildland Fire’s mentoring program.

I was just a year into my role as science communications specialist with the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange, which is part of the Joint Fire Science Program’s Fire Science Exchange Network.

I had mentored young professionals in my many years with the National Weather Service. In the IAWF mentoring program I was randomly paired with Max Levy, who at the time was working on a wildland fire hand crew for the state of Idaho.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

To help ensure this six-month mentor-mentee partnership would work for both of us, we were encouraged to have a get-to-know-each-other meeting. That meeting took place on May 29. You are probably wondering about the relevance of the date to the mentoring program and this story. Well, toward the end of our initial productive meeting, during which we agreed to work together over the next six months, I happened to mention that it was my birthday. Remarkably, Max said it was his birthday too. I said we couldn’t be twins because I already have a twin sister, but we could be triplets. And Max countered with the incredible fact that he too was a twin – having a twin brother. What are the odds we would be randomly paired, hold a meeting on our shared birthday, and find out we both had twin siblings? I remember saying we definitely had to work together. And that is exactly what we did.

In our initial meeting, Max indicated he was very interested in community preparedness and resilience. He already had a solid knowledge base on the topic but wanted to expand on it. He also wanted to learn, in general, about experiences others had on wildfires. I knew this was going to be one of my favorite aspects of the mentoring program because I would be learning just as much from Max as he would learn from me.

My background was not in community preparedness and resilience, but I did serve 22 years as an incident meteorologist working on wildfires across the United States. Another aspect of our partnership that I was excited about was that we agreed on the importance of helping other young professionals. One of the goals of the Joint Fire Science Program is to ensure we support the next generation with their growth and knowledge of the fire and forestry community. Even though I worked with the fire and forestry community in my roles with the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange and the National Weather Service, my eyes were opened at a National Cohesive Strategy Workshop as to just how many entities are connected to this community. Max felt strongly we should ensure young professionals are aware of all that is out there for them as they decide on potential career paths. Thus, our goal was to create a resource document with relevant information for a variety of users by the end of our six-month commitment.

Max and I would typically meet once or twice a month, catch up on life and work, share wildfire stories, and talk about the resources we were adding to our document. The document was filled with relevant resources on several topics that would benefit the fire and forestry community, especially young professionals.

Our six months went by quickly and our document was complete. But the story does not end there, thanks to Max’s leadership. Max wanted to take our project to the next level and turn our resource document into an online web resource. And so, our partnership continued beyond the required six months.

Over the next four months, amongst life conversations and career advice, work was done to create the Wildland Fire Resources Library

The library is a centralized hub for the wildland fire community, providing access to valuable resources, opportunities, and information. The content focuses on building community resilience and providing a starting point for young professionals to gain further knowledge of the fire and forestry community. The core topics that can be found on the site include community resilience, fire information, smoke monitoring, climate and weather resources, student assistant programs, employment opportunities, wildfire training, and fire and forestry groups.

We welcome your thoughts about the resource we have put together.

Related article: Finding your mentor

I am grateful the IAWF offers the mentoring program. Young professionals, now more than ever, would greatly benefit from your leadership and guidance. And it will be a wonderful learning experience for you too.

Working with Max has helped in my role with the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange. For that I am extremely lucky and glad I do not have to consider Max as a mentee, but rather a friend.

I am also happy to report Max worked on a helitack crew for the Washington Department of Natural Resources this season, and I look forward to hearing and sharing more wildfire stories with him.

Please check out the IAWF mentoring program and consider making a difference. It can be every bit as good as our May 29 experience!

Wildland Fire Resources Library

The IAWF has an open period for applications twice a year. After the applications are received and reviewed, the IAWF matches the mentors and mentees based on interests and geographic location. The program encourages both face to face mentoring and online remote mentoring, depending on the location of the participants, who can be anyway around the world. A mentoring opportunity is also offered during IAWF conferences.

IAWF Mentoring Program

Eric Evenson is the science communications specialist for the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange. Evenson spent 33 years with the National Weather Service, which included stops in Maine, Montana, Missouri, Idaho, and Vermont. For 22 years, Everson served as an incident meteorologist, communicating critical fire weather information at large wildfire incidents. As an incident meteorologist, Evenson was part of the training cadre and mentored trainees. As a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont, Everson was part of the fire weather team communicating and coordinating with the local fire and forest community.

In addition, Everson served as the National Weather Service liaison to the fire science working team of the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Commission. Everson has always enjoyed sharing and communicating scientific information to the fire and forest community and is excited to continue that work by serving those in the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange region.

Finding your Mentor

By Mike DeGrosky

As I was applying to be a mentor for the next round of the IAWF mentoring program, I reflected on what a great member benefit the program is, one that is valuable to mentees and mentors alike.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

Eric Evenson reinforces this in his article, in which he describes his mentorship experience with his mentee, Max Levy. Evenson is the science communications specialist for the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange. Levy was working on a wildland fire hand crew for the state of Idaho when the two were randomly matched through the IAWF. Evenson describes how he and Levy immediately made a deep and surprisingly personal connection.

I think of mentoring as an act of helping people draw out, reinforce, or affirm their ideal selves and it was fun to read about Evenson and Levy’s relationship that grew out of the IAWF program.

I am increasingly interested in the experiences of mentees, because that perspective seems to be less prevalent. A quick review of the leadership literature reveals that mentoring programs are mostly talked about from the mentors’ perspectives. Coincidentally, I have had conversations with friends and colleagues contemplating whether or not to seek a mentor, which led me to start thinking about what advice I should offer a person seeking a mentor. I knew what advice I had offered in the past but also wanted to see what the current wisdom is among the experts.

I unexpectedly found a fascinating article on the National Institutes of Health website, summarizing the book The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM, edited by Angela Byars-Winston and Maria Lund Dahlberg. I also discovered a cool resource called Mentoring Statistics You Need To Know – 2025 by Grace Winstanely with the organization Mentorloop.

I would counsel any person seeking a mentor to have a solid idea of their needs and motivations beforehand.

Evenson’s Wildfire article, combined with my foray into current thinking on mentoring and mentorship, helped me focus on four key pieces of advice to offer anyone thinking about the benefits of having a mentor.

First, know what you are looking for from a mentoring relationship before seeking a mentor. Are you looking for psychological and emotional support? Help with problem solving? A role model?

Career guidance? Help with goal setting? Skill development? Sponsorship? While mentoring is often idealized, one does not have to look very deeply into the popular business and leadership media to learn that mentees are often left disappointed by the experience. Unsatisfying mentorships are often rooted in the fact that the mentor and the mentee had different expectations of what the relationship might achieve. Knowing that, I would counsel people seeking mentors to have solid ideas of their needs and motivations beforehand.

I recently experienced this when I asked a friend and former colleague to mentor me in an area in which I want to update my knowledge and gain some confidence. My friend, who I expected to readily accept, instead had questions, including “What do you hope to accomplish?” and “Why me?” We typically approach potential mentors because they have life experience and acquired knowledge that can help us grow and accomplish goals. The catch is that experienced and knowledgeable people we trust and admire are very often busy, and busy people want to know that your request will be an effective use of their time. Anyone approaching a potential mentor should be ready to make a case for the desired mentoring arrangement.

I must admit that my friend’s screening questions surprised me, but I soon thought “That’s so smart; my friend has a big job, a young family, lots of interests, and not much spare time.” I imagine that not only did my friend want to make good use of limited time, but also to know that my friend was the right person and would not let me down. I’m glad I was ready to make my case, and I have a new mentor!

My current mentor is 20 years my junior, so the second piece of advice I would offer is to embrace the possibility of mentoring relationships that may seem to be unconventional. In my case, the conventional wisdom that mentors are always the senior individual is not the case. I’d offer that any extended, reciprocal, relationship can evolve into an effective mentoring partnership and that such a partnership can prove mutually beneficial. I think it’s important to remember that the research tells us that most mentorships do not result from a formal ask but evolve from other relationships.

My third piece of advice has been, and will remain, to purposefully seek mentors in both technical disciplines and the interpersonal and human relations dimensions of our work. It is important to understand that the two may not overlap. In other words, you may need more than one mentor.

And finally, I would counsel that anyone, regardless of organizational role or level, can benefit from having a mentor. I always enjoy encountering leaders who are simultaneously mentoring and being mentored. While we often think of mentors as experienced senior leaders and mentees as up-and-comers with potential, the research I’ve seen consistently shows that senior leaders benefit from being mentored.

Mentoring is a vital leadership and career development tool, as reflected by its popularity. According to Mentorloop, most US Fortune 500 companies, including all US Fortune 50 companies, have mentoring programs and 76 per cent of people surveyed think mentors are important.

IAWF members are so fortunate to have access to a formal, industry specific mentoring program as a free member benefit, and I hope members are taking full advantage.

Find more information on the IAWF mentoring program.

Mike DeGrosky is a student of leadership, lifelong learner, mentor and coach, sometimes writer, and recovering fire chief. He taught for the Department of Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University for 10 years. Follow Mike via LinkedIn.

The smell of danger – understanding wildfire smoke exposure

Associate Professor Michelle Lupton and Professor Anthony White examine filters of wildfire smoke particles. Photo: QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.

By Anthony White

At a laboratory in Australia, researchers are trying to develop rapid, accessible tests that can protect firefighters, military personnel, and the wider community from the escalating health burden of wildfire smoke and polluted air.

The olfactory tissue, located high in the nasal cavity, directly connects the outside world to the brain, making it uniquely vulnerable to toxic particles in polluted air and wildfire smoke. By studying cells and molecular changes in this tissue, researchers can potentially identify early biological warning signs of harm before symptoms appear.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

[Anthony White presented on this research at the 4th International Smoke Symposium in Florida in March 2026.]

The team at the QIMR Berghofer Institute in Brisbane is pioneering the use of the nose as a frontline sensor of environmental harm. Using cutting-edge approaches such as stem cell-derived models, advanced imaging, and profiling of genes, and proteins, the lab investigates how air pollutants trigger inflammation, damage protective barriers, and accelerate risks for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and motor neuron disease.

This work is helping to establish olfactory tissue as a powerful, non-invasive biomarker source for monitoring exposure and predicting long-term brain health impacts.

Understanding the role of the nose

Where there’s fire, there’s smoke, and our noses have been reading that signal for millions of years. Smell is one of our most primal senses, hard-wired to memory and survival. Fire first burned on Earth about 360 million years ago and has been shaping animal, and then human, behaviour ever since.

In Australia, for example, bushfire smoke awakens Gould’s long-eared bats, and fat-tailed dunnarts from rest, triggering escape behaviours. Other species detect smoke and fire in different ways; birds of prey follow smoke columns for hunting opportunities, while fire beetles actively seek out burnt wood to lay their eggs. By about 300,000 years ago, humans were managing fire themselves. For Indigenous cultures across the planet, fire and smoke became a part of seasonal rhythms and land stewardship. Cultural burning practices were designed not only to manage vegetation but to protect biodiversity, including giving animals time and cues to move away from danger. For many early people, the scent of smoke wasn’t just a warning, it was the smell of home. But in today’s climate, as wildfires become more frequent, intense, and prolonged, and smoke plumes drift across continents, what does the smell of smoke mean to us now? Can our noses still help us make sense of this modern environmental threat?

What’s in wildfire smoke, and why it matters

Smoke Pollution Alert – Public Health Notice: Air quality in your region has reached hazardous levels due to wildfire smoke. Children, elderly adults, and people with heart or lung conditions should stay indoors. Avoid physical activity outside. Use air purifiers if available. The smell of smoke may be present even when skies appear clear.

We see alerts like these more often now. But why do we need such warnings? What’s in the smoke that makes it so dangerous?

 Wildfire smoke is more than just the scent of burning wood, it’s a complex, shifting mix of thousands of gases and particles. Fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅) is especially concerning; these microscopic particles are small enough to bypass the nose and lung natural defences and enter deep into the bloodstream.

Mixed into this airborne soup are harmful gases such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, acrolein, and benzene, many of which are known to damage cells, irritate tissues, and disrupt bodily systems.

The specific chemical makeup of the smoke can also change depending on what burns: forest, grassland, peat, or homes and vehicles packed with synthetic materials. This matters, as these pollutants can trigger asthma, bronchitis, and cardiovascular issues. They can damage blood vessels, and some have been linked to changes in brain function, increasing the risk of neurological disease with prolonged exposure. Our noses may register that familiar campfire aroma but science tells us it may be a toxic warning signal.

First contact: the nose as a sensor

The nose is more than a breathing gateway, it’s a carefully tuned chemical detection system and our first responder to air pollution. As we inhale, air passes through narrow nasal passages lined with mucus and tiny hairs (called cilia) that trap particles and pathogens. But higher up, near the roof of the nasal cavity, lies a key tissue: the olfactory epithelium. This small, specialized patch of nasal cells contains olfactory (nasal) receptor neurons, cells capable of detecting thousands of different airborne molecules, including those in wildfire smoke. When these molecules bind to the receptors, they trigger electrical signals that travel directly to the brain’s olfactory bulb, bypassing many of the filtering systems other senses rely on. This fast-track connection to brain regions controlling emotion and memory explains why the scent of smoke (and other aromas) can evoke vivid memories or instinctive fear. The nose also plays a frontline protective role, filtering harmful particles and engaging the immune system in response to what we inhale. In the context of wildfire smoke, this makes the nose not just a detector, but a biological barrier, and the first to suffer damage when we breath toxic air.

Nose to brain particle delivery. Photo: QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute.
Smell to science: sampling the nasal airway

The nose doesn’t just react to smoke; it also records what’s coming in. Inside its delicate lining, wildfire smoke can leave behind markers of biological changes, like a molecular fingerprint of exposure.

Researchers can potentially use this, turning the nasal passage into a powerful site for non-invasive health monitoring. Using simple tools like a nasal brush or swab, scientists can gently collect cells from the olfactory epithelium, the same region that detects smell. This is similar in practice to a COVID-19 nasal test. In some cases, specialists may also perform a nasal mucosal biopsy, using a small surgical tool under local anaesthetic to collect a more in-depth tissue sample. Once gathered, researchers can apply techniques such as RNA (gene) sequencing, protein analysis, and microscopy to uncover how smoke is affecting cellular responses.

Biological clues in the nose

The nasal lining responds quickly to environmental insults, and wildfire smoke is no exception. When exposed, nasal cells may begin to express what researchers call biological clues (or biomarkers) – measurable signs that the body is reacting to harm. These clues can include inflammation signals like cytokines (inflammatory signal proteins released by cells), oxidative stress (free radical) markers, and DNA injury. In high-risk groups, these changes often show up earlier and more locally in the nose than in blood or lung samples, making nasal testing a potentially powerful, and accessible tool.

A gateway to the brain

The brain is normally thought of as well-protected, shielded by a blood-brain barrier (a layer of cells that control movement of substances from the blood into the brain). But there’s one route where this barrier can be bypassed: through the nose. The olfactory nerve, which carries smell information directly into the brain, passes through tiny holes in the skull, directly linking the nose and the brain (Figure 1). This close contact means that toxins or particulates from smoke can, in theory, reach the brain. This pathway is now being studied as a possible link between repeated wildfire smoke exposure and neurological symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, and even long-term disease risk. The nose may be a critical warning system not just for the lungs, but for the brain as well.

Firefighters, veterans, and other vulnerable groups

 Wildland firefighters are among the most exposed people on the planet when it comes to wildfire smoke. Many spend days on the frontline with limited respiratory protection, season after season. Military veterans, particularly those with past exposure to burn pits or combat environments, may carry additional respiratory and neurological vulnerabilities, especially when they transition into firefighting roles. But the risk is also wider. Children, whose lungs and brains are still developing, older adults, whose systems are more fragile, and people with asthma, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes, are all more sensitive to smoke, even at levels lower than what firefighters face.

That’s where nasal testing could make a difference. By identifying early biological changes in the nose, scientists may be able to detect exposure impacts before damage becomes irreversible. These tests could help guide rest periods, determine when a responder needs support, or help families make informed decisions about smoke exposure in high-risk regions.

The potential for early detection

The idea is simple: a quick, low-cost test using a nasal swab that could reveal whether smoke exposure has begun to take a toll on your body, before you feel sick. This could be done in clinics, field stations, or potentially as part of mobile testing units deployed during major fire seasons.

Researchers are developing tools that can read inflammatory markers, stress signals, and other biological clues in nasal tissue to understand how smoke exposure is progressing. The goal is to offer real-time feedback for those on the front lines, and early reassurance (or warning) for the broader public.

With climate change driving longer fire seasons and heavier smoke loads, early detection could become a cornerstone of future health response, and the nose, the unlikely frontline of wildfire resilience.

Protecting the nose and the body

Protecting ourselves from wildfire smoke starts at the source. Indigenous cultural burning has long offered a safer, smarter way to reduce fuel loads, protect biodiversity, and minimize smoke intensity. Supporting these methods, alongside prescribed burns, forest restoration, and land-use reform, helps tackle the problem before it reaches our lungs.

For those on the front lines, modern protective tools, from high-quality respirators and improved shelter infrastructure to air quality monitors and ventilation systems, are crucial. Researchers are also exploring nasal sprays, filters, and anti-inflammatory treatments to help reduce harm where exposure starts.

At the public health level, early warning systems, clear air-quality messaging, and potentially even nasal-based health testing could offer communities more agency and real-time decision-making during fire season. By protecting the nose, we may be able to help safeguard the brain, lungs, heart, and future health of those most affected by our changing air.

Anthony White works at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Queensland and has been awarded an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship. His research has contributed to the development of first-in-class metal-drugs as a potential new therapeutic approach to treat motor neuron disease. He is currently developing new human patient-based models of neurodegeneration and has established a new research direction examining the impact of wildfire smoke on the human brain.