An article by Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline section combined their data with information from the Associated Press to present a bleak picture of hiring and retention among wildland firefighters in the Forest Service’s California Region.
Below are excerpts from the article published July 14, 2021:
The Forest Service’s California region had filled 3,820 of 4,620 planned permanent and temporary positions as of early July, agency spokesperson Regina Corbin wrote in an email to Stateline.
Thirty-one of California’s 44 hotshot crews are fully staffed, Corbin said.
Almost two-thirds of vacancies at the end of spring hiring were for senior firefighters on engine crews, the data reviewed by Stateline shows.
The agency sought to fill 781 vacant permanent positions in California during spring hiring this year, according to the data. But it ended the hiring period with 725 vacancies. That’s a net gain of just 56 employees.
In June 2015 the region’s leaders expected 96% of engines to be fully staffed, for instance. In June 2020, the share was 59%.
In a different article published the same day at Reuters, still another disturbing fact came to light about wildland firefighter vacancies:
20% of the federal government’s full time firefighting positions are currently vacant, according to Kelly Martin, president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.
This large number of vacancies, including hundreds of senior positions, can severely degrade the effectiveness of the Federal government’s ability to suppress wildland fires, which is a Homeland Security issue.
