Prescribed fire in Yosemite National Park. Merced River and moon. NPS photo by Isaiah Hirschfield.
By Steve Pyne
The Pleistocene epoch that began 2.6 million years ago sent ice in waves through Yosemite.
Glaciers gouged out great valleys along the Merced and Tuolumne rivers, ice sheets rounded granite domes, cirques sculpted the High Sierra. John Muir traced virtually every landscape feature of Yosemite to its legacy of ice.
Now the residual ice is melting, the streams and waterfalls are drying and the living landscape is burning. In 1990, the A-Rock fire closed the park for the only time in its history, so far. The 2013 Rim fire burned around the Hetch Hetchy reservoir; the 2018 Ferguson fire burned along the park’s Wawona Road. Where the fires didn’t spread, their smoke did.
Add in the industrial combustion of fossil fuels, with its climatic impacts, and virtually every management issue of Yosemite today traces back to fire.
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Humans have always used fire: It’s our ecological signature.
The end of the last glaciation allowed us, a fire-wielding species, to interact with an increasingly fire-receptive planet. Our pact with fire was mutual. Fire allowed us to flourish; in return, we have taken fire everywhere, even to Antarctica.
The pact had to operate within boundaries set by living landscapes. After all, fire was a creation of life, which furnished its oxygen and fuel and established ecological barriers. Then we discovered an immense reservoir of combustibles buried in geologic time. It was as though we had found a new world –- a fossilized, “lithic” landscape –we could work the way we did living landscapes. The only constraints were those people chose to impose on themselves.
Add up all the burning that people now do in living, and it would seem we are refashioning the Earth with the fire-informed equivalent of an Ice Age, complete with a change in climate, rising sea levels, a mass extinction, major shifts in biogeography and smoke palls. Little on Earth is unaffected.
Fire is driving off the last vestiges of the Pleistocene, from its ice to its mammoths. We have been creating a Pyrocene for millennia, but binge-burning fossil fuels put the process on afterburners.
Fifty years ago Yosemite recognized that its fire scene was out of whack. The problem then was not too much of the wrong kind of fire but too little of the right kind. The park sought to restore pre-settlement fire regimes. Among targeted sites was Illilouette Creek, an elevated basin southeast of Glacier Point.
The park recognized that suppressing fire had stockpiled fuels from the foothills to the crestline, caused Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to overflow with invasive conifers that blocked views, and prevented the fabled sequoias from regenerating. The park introduced prescribed fire and learned to loose-herd wildfires. The Illilouette basin shuffled toward something like its former fire regime.
No place has the fire program it wants, but Yosemite seems better positioned than the national forests and private lands around it to cope. The issue is no longer to restore natural fire but to find the right mix of fires suppressed and prescribed, and of wildfires managed, to ward off the megafires that are plaguing everyplace else.
Yosemite deals with fires that can threaten small and not-so-small villages. Its specialty is working with wildland fire.
By Aug. 20 of this year the park had coped with 54 fires, 43 from lightning and 11 from people. Some were put out. Some were confined within natural barriers. And a few burning in Illilouette Basin were tweaked as nature’s invisible hand massaged them into five decades of layered burning. The legacy of past fires had altered the conditions for the fires that followed, softening the shock of tougher, meaner burns.
Yosemite has long been celebrated for distilling into near-crystalline state the magnificence of the Western landscape. As it moves from ice to fire, it is showing that it may also serve as a proxy for some of what the Earth needs to do to survive our deepening fire age. There is no way we can’t not manage fire.
Laura Paskus, a reporter and producer for PBS of New Mexico, interviewed three wildland firefighters for an episode of Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present, and Future. They covered some of the pressing issues faced by wildland firefighters, including health care, benefits, extensive travel, and pay.
Seen in the video are Marcus Cornwell, federal wildland firefighter; Kelly Martin, president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters; and Jonathon Golden, former wildland firefighter.
Jose T. Calderon and Cessar Saenz, both of San Diego County
Jose T. Calderon
Two water tender operators have died of COVID-19 this month. They both worked for Brenda’s Fire Water based in Ramona, California. Two trucks with three drivers were dispatched from the company to the Dixie Fire in Northern California. They worked shifts to keep the water tenders working on the fire as much as possible.
Jose T. Calderon of Chula Vista California had spent much of his adult life driving virtually all types of trucks. He was the first of the two to die. On August 11 after 14 days of employment with the company and testing positive for COVID, he was taken from the west zone of the Dixie Fire to a hospital in Redding. He spent three weeks on a ventilator before passing away there September 5.
A family member told Wildfire Today that Jose’s death certificate listed the cause of death as respiratory failure, COVID-19, and smoke inhalation.
After Jose went to the hospital, his co-worker Cessar Saenz of El Cajon, California tested positive for COVID at the Dixie Fire and went home. When his symptoms worsened he was admitted to Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, California. About three or four weeks later he died on September 14. He had just turned 63 two weeks earlier.
Cessar Saenz. Posted on his Facebook page Feb. 13, 2021.
On July 25 he changed his employment status on Facebook to “Started New Job at Happily Retired” and was planning on moving to Texas.
Cessar drove water tenders on fires off and on since 2001. John Clark thought of Cessar not just as a good friend, but like a brother. He said Cessar liked to ride his motorcycle, fish, and camp. Cessar had been a truck and charter bus driver for decades and for eight years drove a mobile clinic out of Alpine, California to seven Tribal Reservations for the Southern Indian Health Council. He also taught people how to drive school busses.
Brenda Dahl of Brenda’s Fire Water confirmed the deaths of Jose and Cessar, but declined to provide any additional information. Neither the US Forest Service or the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection responded to multiple inquiries about these line of duty deaths. As far as we know there has been no official announcement from a fire agency about the passing of these two firefighters. The water tenders were under a call when needed contract with one of the two agencies.
Our sincere condolences go out to the families, friends, and co-workers of Jose and Cessar.
OPINION
Before COVID, the line of duty deaths of contractors on wildfires was always announced and their service was honored even though they are not regular government employees. It is not clear why the FS and CAL FIRE now feel the need to cover up fatalities on fires. I can remember when reports were written and lessons were learned from serious accidents and fatalities in the line duty. Is the problem that there are now too many to document and they are offloading that duty to journalists?
Putting your head in the sand is rarely a successful strategy.
President Biden visited two locations in the West Monday to gather information about the current wildfire situation. His first stop was in Boise where he became the first US President to visit the National Interagency Fire Center since it was created 50 years ago.
During a tour of NIFC he talked with a group of smokejumpers and the President was seen holding a pulaski fire tool. Later, sitting in front of what looked like shelves of parachutes he met with Idaho Governor Brad Little, George Geissler of the National Association of State Foresters, and Grant Beebe, BLM’s Assistant Director for Fire and Aviation. The President said Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley intended to be there but their flight was cancelled due to weather.
President Biden at NIFC Sept. 13, 2021.
Mr. Biden praised wildland firefighters for the work they do and reiterated that he is committed to raising their pay. The full text of his public remarks at Boise are below, but here is an excerpt:
The fact is that we’re in a situation where too many memorials are — have been held. And I’ve directed my administration to provide for pay bonuses and incentives to ensure every federal firefighter — because that’s the only authority I have — makes at least $15 an hour. I mean, they should make a hell of a lot — heck of a lot more, but at least $15 an hour. And I’m committing to work with Congress to raise the pay gap for federal wildland firefighters.
And so, you know, believe it or not, there’s massive shortage of fire hoses. I think you all get it. But the idea that we went into this fire season with a shortage of fire hoses — that’s all I heard from my guys back East and in the Midwest: no fire hoses.
Well, fortunately, they thought a long time ago about a thing called the National Defense Act. And what I was able to do — excuse me, the Defense Production Act.
And I was able to restart production of bringing — bringing a lot of people back to work, delivering 21,920 new feet of fire hose in the frontlines, putting a company back to work that was out of business that stopped — stopped manufacturing.
The Associated Press reported Monday that the administration’s use of the Defense Production Act helped an Oklahoma City nonprofit called NewView Oklahoma, which provides the bulk of the U.S. Forest Service’s hose, obtain needed supplies to produce and ship 415 miles of fire hose. If that is correct, two zeros should be added to the 21,920 feet mentioned by the President, making it 2,192,000, which is 415 miles.
President Biden at NIFC Sept. 13, 2021. L to R: Idaho Gov. Brad Little, President Biden, Grant Beebe (BLM).
About two hours after Air Force One landed, it departed for Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento. After landing he visited California’s Office of Emergency Services and received a briefing on the wildfires in the state. At one point a map of the Caldor Fire was displayed on a large screen. The plan was for the President to then take an aerial tour of a fire in El Dorado County, the location of the huge 210,000-acre Caldor Fire. And following that, more public remarks about wildland fire.
President Biden receives briefing about the Caldor and other fires in California after flying to Mather AFB, Sept. 13, 2021.President Biden receives briefing about the Caldor and other fires in California after flying to Mather AFB, Sept. 13, 2021.
Below is the text of the Presidents public remarks while at NIFC September 13, 2021, provided by the White House:
12:08 P.M. MDT
MR. BEEBE: Mr. President, on behalf of the wildland fire community, I’m proud to welcome you to the National Interagency Fire Center — or NIFC, for short. And we always say NIFC is a place, not an organization.
THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.)
MR. BEEBE: We’re incredibly proud of it.
Thank you for coming. We’re honored you’re the first President to visit in the 50-year history of the Fire Center, and it’s quite an honor.
I’m Grant Beebe. I’m the Bureau of Land Management’s Assistant Director for Fire and Aviation. And speaking for all the NIFC partners, I’d like to thank you particularly for being here and for your genuine and intense interest in wildland fire management.
I just want to point out: This is a coalition of partners. We have a team here. We have National Park Service, DOD, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Association of State Foresters representing the states, FEMA, U.S. Fire Administration, and, of course, U.S. Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service.
I think I got them all; somebody will correct me. Oh, and of course, National Weather Service — one of the original partners here at NIFC. The inception of this was a Forest Service, BLM, NOAA, Fish and Wi- — National Weather Service operation.
So, we’re incredibly proud of it. We’re so proud to have you here.
NIFC was created 50 years ago, and it is the original and durable model for interagency, intergovernmental coordination. Extremely lengthy, intense, and damaging fire seasons like the one we’re experiencing now reinforce the purpose of places like this.
Through the hard work, ingenuity, and persistence of generations of fire professionals, wildfire response across the nation is unified, cooperative, and professional. And I’ll say that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. We inherited this place, and we’re trying to keep it going.
In wildland fire, there’s no one community, agency, Tribal organization that has enough resources to manage all of its fires. Fires don’t know jurisdictional boundaries, and we try to ignore jurisdictional boundaries ourselves. One of our speakers will speak to that particularly.
But the kind of fires we’re experiencing these days — the kind of long-duration, massive, destructive fires we’ve witnessed in recent years in places like California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and, unfortunately, for Governor Otter [sic] this year, in Idaho — they’re teaching us that we need to maybe change the way we’re doing business.
Canadian firefighters arrive in the United States, September 8, 2021. Photo by Jennifer Myslivy, BLM
On Wednesday 40 firefighters from Quebec, Canada arrived in the United States to assist in suppressing wildfires.
In Boise they received an orientation briefing and fire shelter deployment training at the National Interagency Fire Center. The crews have since traveled to the Schneider Springs Fire on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington.
The National Wildfire Preparedness Level has been at 5, the highest level, for nearly two months. Currently, 99 large wildfires are burning across the western U.S., with 57 of them having a strategy of full suppression.
Wildland firefighters in the Departments of Agriculture and Interior need to be exfiltrated, and given refuge in the Department of Homeland Security
Revised at 6:56 p.m. PDT Sept. 10, 2021
Ukonom hand crew from the Six Rivers National Forest. USFS photo, 2021.
Since March, 2020, 680 U.S. Forest Service employees in the agency’s California Region have tested positive for COVID-19 according to Anthony Scardina on September 7, 2021, the Deputy Regional Forester for State and Private Forestry. Of those, 561 were wildland firefighters, he said. *Stanton Florea, Fire Communications Specialist for the Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center said on Sept. 8 that approximately 918 wildland fire employees within the entire agency have tested positive for the virus.
Mr. Florea said they do not formally track the number of their employees that have been hospitalized with COVID.
In the last week word leaked that one of those firefighters who tested positive died due to the coronavirus, and a reporter discovered that another died of an unspecified illness. Subsequently, the Lassen National Forest released a statement late at night September 5 confirming the two fatalities and the names of the deceased, but nothing about the cause of death, dates, or the location.
Marcus Pacheco was an assistant engine operator who had 13 years of fire experience with CAL FIRE and 30 with the FS. He died of an unspecified illness while working on the Dixie Fire.
Allen Johnson was a semi-retired 40-year FS veteran and was serving as a Liaison Officer on an Incident Management Team on the French Fire when he contracted COVID.
During an interview September 7 with Wildfire Today we asked Mr. Scardina how many FS firefighters had died in the line of duty after contracting COVID.
“I’m not going to report fatalities of our employees when it comes to personal illnesses and other privacy matters in terms of deaths at this point in time,” he said. “We’re taking a look at those situations, what the review process will be to make sure we understand the facts. And it’s just simply too early out of respect for the family of being appropriate for us to comment at this point in time on those situations.
The deaths were first officially announced to the public in a manner more formal than Facebook Sept. 7, 2021 by Mr. Scardina at a news conference. It was tweeted by both the FS and the California Office of Emergency Services. The CAL OES recording below had much better audio than the FS version.
On September 8 Mr. Florea said there have been two deaths of FS fire personnel that are suspected to be related to COVID. Requests for more details, such as names, dates, name of fire, or location did not receive a response, so it is not certain if these two are the fatalities disclosed by Mr. Scardina on September 7, who also provided no details.
Historically the FS has disclosed fatalities within 24 to 48 hours. The agency usually waits until the families are notified before releasing the names of the deceased, which may take a little longer. Most of the time the general circumstances will also be released, such as hit by a falling tree, vehicle accident, or entrapped by a fire. But for firefighters who contracted COVID on the job, the FS has been extremely reluctant to disclose any information about these line of duty hospitalizations and deaths. The agency’s public information officers whose job is to inform America about FS activities, fires, and circumstances that affect the health and safety of their employees and the public, have been keeping it secret, slow-walking and dissembling when finally responding to requests from journalists about line of duty illnesses and deaths of fire personnel.
One firefighter told Wildfire Today about something he noticed about supervisory personnel at fires. “I’m noticing that all Incident Management Team members are wearing wristbands and being screened everyday,” he said. “This is not happening for firefighters. They are wearing colored wristbands to show they cleared the screening, but nothing for firefighters.”
The firefighter said in order to help protect his family when he got home, he asked to get tested while being demobilized from the fire, but the request was denied.
We are hearing rumblings that some fires are being hit very hard by COVID, with large numbers of personnel testing positive or being quarantined but this is difficult to confirm without the agencies’ cooperation.
Opinion
Fighting wildfires has always had a long list of recognized risks. An analysis by the National Interagency Fire Center determined that from 1990 through 2014 there were 440 fatalities in the line of duty among wildland firefighters. The top four categories which accounted for 88 percent of the deaths were, in decreasing order, medical issues (usually heart related), aircraft accidents, vehicle accidents, and being entrapped by the fire.
The COVID pandemic adds a new category and level of risk from which these firefighters now have to defend themselves. They already wear Kevlar chaps to prevent a chain saw from cutting into their leg, a helmet, leather gloves, hearing protection, safety glasses, fire resistant shirts and pants, and a five-pound foldable shelter to climb under when entrapped by a fire.
Many of these highly-trained firefighters comprise more than 100 hotshot crews. They are tactical athletes who carry more than 30 pounds of gear up and down steep, rugged terrain for up to 16 hours every day while battling a fire, sometimes miles from the nearest vehicle. They immerse themselves in wildland fire science and fire behavior to anticipate what the fire will do in order to avoid unnecessary exposure to risks.
But now their employer, the US Forest Service, is reluctant to fully disclose to them a key fact related to their safety — how many of their fellow firefighters have been hospitalized or killed in the line of duty by COVID.
Ventana Hotshots holding a line on the Monument Fire in Northern California, August, 2021. USFS photo.
The FS has not been disclosing COVID line of duty deaths the same way they announced that two firefighters were killed in an airplane crash or one died after being hit by a falling tree, all within the last two months.
COVID among firefighters is not really a “personal illness”, as described Mr. Scardina, when it is caused by a requirement from their employer, for example, to travel across the country and work with 4,809 others at the Dixie Fire in California. For decades the Forest Service and the other four federal land management agencies have, as far as we know, reported all line of duty deaths, including illnesses such as cardiac issues, which might be described as a “personal illness”.
It is puzzling that the leadership in the federal wildland fire organizations are so scared or reluctant to talk about the effects of COVID on their work force. I don’t see any upside in a doomed-to-fail effort to keep it secret. Maybe it is a holdover thought process from the previous administration whose leader said at least 38 times in 2020 between February and October that COVID-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing.
By refusing to be transparent about pandemic related illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths on the job, the perception could be that the government has something to hide or they want to restrict the disclosure of news that could reflect negatively on the administration. It would be impossible to argue that withholding this information is in the best interests of the employees. And it degrades the trust that an employee would hope to have in their leadership.
Far more important than protecting the political future of the President, is being honest with their firefighters about the degree of risk they are taking while serving their country battling wildfires.
Something has to change
Federal wildland firefighters work for the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service. The first responsibility of these agencies is the safety of their personnel, including the 15,000 firefighters. If they are so cavalier about this responsibility to not even care how many have been hospitalized in the line of duty, and keep secret as much as possible the extent of how many have gotten seriously ill or died from COVID while working for them, then something has to change.
The primary job of these five agencies is not fighting fire — it is very far from it. They inspect meat packing plants, issue what used to be called Food Stamps, clean rest rooms, manage visitors, and grow trees. Those at the top of the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior where they presently reside, in most cases have no background in emergency services. It is not in their DNA to worry night and day about those under their command being injured or killed in the line of duty. Career fire personnel understand this.
The firefighters in these five agencies need to be exfiltrated from the DOI and DOA and given refuge in a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security where top management pays attention to the risks emergency management personnel face. If I was a betting man, I would wager that they care how many of their employees have been killed or hospitalized by COVID, at least publicly to the extent allowed by the White House.
This new agency of 15,000 wildland firefighters could be named National Fire Service. It could even welcome the structural firefighters that work for the Department of Defense.
Below are the stated values and principles of wildland fire leaders. They may have been forgotten by a few at the top of the five federal wildland fire management organizations.
Wildland Fire Leadership Values and Principles.
*At 6:56 p.m. PDT the article was edited to correct the numbers of Forest Service fire personnel who tested positive for COVID since March, 2020; 918 nationally, and 561 in the California Region (R5). The regional and national numbers do not conflict.
