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“It feels impossible to stay”

Experienced and skilled firefighters are the last line of defense against wildland fire, but that line is fraying because the government decided long ago that they’re not worth very much.

He explains that many firefighters earn the same base pay as fast-food servers while taking severe risks all season long with their physical and mental health. Despite mounting public concern over the increasing severity of fires, the federal government has not seen fit to meaningfully address these issues. The effects of this chronic neglect have become strikingly clear as the fire service finds it difficult to refill its ranks and retain experienced people.

Fighting fire has always been a dangerous occupation, but in the last decade it has become staggering in its demands. Abel Martinez, a USFS engine captain and the NFFE fire chair, told him, “The ship is sinking.”

Streep asked Grant Beebe, a former jumper who now heads the BLM fire program, whether there had been a firefighter exodus. Beebe initially hesitated. “Exodus is a pretty strong word,” he said. But then he reconsidered. “I’ll say yeah. Yeah.”

Norbeck prescribed fire
A member of the Alpine Hotshots ignites the Norbeck prescribed fire, October 20, 2014 in Custer State Park, SD. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

Although nobody could provide Streep with precise numbers, leaders including Beebe are especially concerned that the attrition has been particularly acute among those with extensive experience — those such as  Elkind. It takes years — and hundreds of thousands of dollars — to train a wildland firefighter capable of overseeing the numerous resources —  including engines, crews, medical units, helicopters, and smokejumpers —  assigned to large fires. As Beebe put it, “You can’t just hire some person off the street into one of our higher-level management jobs.”

And Streep in this feature very clearly understands and explains the bases of the crisis. “More than anything, wildland firefighters are leaving because they’re compensated so poorly, the result of a byzantine civil service structure that makes it extremely hard to sustain a career. The federal fire service is responsible for managing blazes on nearly 730 million acres of land — an area almost the size of India. Among the five agencies, one dominates in terms of influence and size: the Forest Service, which employs more than 11,000 wildland firefighters, most of whom work from roughly April to October. But the hiring system dates to the early years of the agency, when it often recruited from bars and relied on volunteers to suppress wildfires by 10 a.m.”

He adds that the agency acknowledged its attrition problem by effecting a raise from $13 to $15 an hour, created by the Biden administration in 2021.

ProPublica.org

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Speakers include:

      • George Broyles, former wildland firefighter who led the Forest Service’s smoke research program between 2008 and 2014
      • Yolanda Cruz, learning hub coordinator at Santa Fe Community Foundation
      • Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico reporter and ProPublica Local Reporting Network member
      • Antonia Roybal-Mack, attorney and founder and managing partner of Roybal-Mack & Cordova PC
      • Abe Streep, journalist and author of the book Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance and Hope on a Reservation in Montana
      • Kit Rachlis, ProPublica senior editor (moderator)

 ~ THANKS and a big tip of the hardhat to Dick Mangan for this one. 

Oregon IMTs and firefighters out for ice storm recovery

Western Oregon’s recent ice storm cleanup, after one of the worst winter storms in history, is now in the mop-up stage, and firefighters with the Oregon Department of Forestry have teamed up with the City of Springfield to help. For most of a week now, they’ve worked in the Thurston area of Springfield east of Eugene, clearing downed trees and sidewalks. A team of 14 started by clearing students’ paths to area schools.

“We noticed that right after the ice storm, they were using the streets to walk because they weren’t able to access the sidewalk,” ODF forester Kolten Vickers told Albert James with KEZI News in Eugene . “So we started around schools, and now we’re branching off into other parts of neighborhoods.”

Vickers has been with ODF for five years, but this is his first time cleaning up after a winter storm. “Primarily I assist with fires during the summers,” he said. “But with ODF having incident management teams — it’s all incidents. So storm recovery falls under that response.”

Local resident Patty Gori regularly walks the neighborhood with her dogs and was grateful to see the clearing work. “It was a mess,” she said. “But now, it’s amazing. They got so much cleaned up in the last couple of days, I just can’t even believe it.”

Who ya gonna call? Firefighters. Besides clearing streets and chainsaw duty, ODF sent an IMT to coordinate a unified response to the storm.

“You don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes,” said Joe Hessel, from a longtime firefighting family in eastern Oregon.  “You see firefighters digging a fireline or public works crews working on city streets. At some point, somebody’s trying to organize that chaotic potential into something that makes sense. That’s what we’re here helping the city do.” Hessel serves as a deputy incident commander for this post-storm incident, but he’s usually an incident commander with a state team. He said the storm response effort was started and led by Lane County and the City of Springfield, but on January 25 they transferred command over to the city, with the IMT from ODF still assisting.

“In large part, the city staff and departments are doing the work, just like when we were with Lane County,” Hessel said. “We’re helping at the highest level to coordinate and put a plan together to ensure that the right work is getting done at the right place at the right time.”

“We do train for incidents outside of wildfire,” he explained. “The ICS system we use on wildfires carries right across to pretty much any other incident. We’ve been to Florida and helped the State of Florida in hurricane response. We’re prepared in the event that there’s an earthquake or a tsunami here. Last year one of our teams, a short team like we have here, went to a county and helped out with a cyber attack and planning for how to manage and deal with that.”

“ODF is great, they do this type of work for a living in fire management, so they have a lot of experience in incident management,” said Ben Gibson, operations maintenance manager with the City of Springfield. “They’ve been a great resource to our emergency operations center staff in helping us move forward smoothly.”

ODF truck
Oregon Department of Forestry logo on a truck door.

Hessel said both his team and the local crews have learned a lot from each other, and he hopes the information shared between the groups can go a long way in responding to future events. “That transference of skills and knowledge to each other will benefit pretty much either entity,” he said. “And then we’ll actually develop some products we’ll leave behind — some written documents, like a debris removal plan that could be used next time, or a contact list with names on it.”

Eugene and Springfield and the surrounding area endured a record-breaking winter storm with snow and ice and rain and high winds. The storm caused widespread power outages and severely damaged at least 60 percent of the trees at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum. The storm took out powerlines at the arboretum and necessitated a safety closure, according the a report by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Brad Van Appel, longtime director at Mt. Pisgah, said there was about an inch of ice on the trees and it was more than most of them could take.

“We have 209 acres, much of it full of trees,” he said. “I think nearly every tree took some damage.” For those wanting to help, the arboretum and its sister organization Friends of Buford Park are looking for volunteers, and they can sign up online.

Also of note, ODF is looking for a Wildland Fire Supervisor to manage the fire program down in Klamath Falls. This is a permanent benefited position. $4,918 – $7,244 monthly depending on experience. Recruitment closes January 31. 

Details: WILDLAND FIRE SUPERVISOR APPLICATION

ONLY YOU — and all your friends — can fight forest fires!

“All open federal firefighting jobs are posted at usajobs.gov and  applications must be submitted online. At USAJobs, you can search for these positions using the terms ‘forestry technician’ or ‘wildland firefighter.’ The search will return all firefighting positions open for application within both the Department of the Interior and the Agriculture Department.”

The National Interagency Fire Center (nifc.gov) has this and more information online, and the Forest Service has many inspirational videos online explaining the benefits of a “career” as a firefighter.

“The majority of firefighter positions are seasonal in nature,” according to NIFC, “with a typical season lasting from May to September or October. If you are interested in one of these positions, you will need to begin looking and applying for these jobs several months prior, typically in November through early January, as the hiring process can be lengthy.”

NIFC jobs promo

What the people at NIFC don’t tell you is why the applicant numbers have fallen off this year — again — badly enough that some hotshot crews may not be able to send out a full crew, some engines are unstaffed, and IMTs are having trouble filling positions and are even considering combining T1 with T2 positions to make up a fully staffed team.

USFS hiring officials say that only about 6,000 applications were  submitted for fire positions and close to 11,000 applications for non-fire positions — before any sort of qualification check is run on the applicants.  Announcements for temp seasonal positions have been extended to November 13; they were set to close November 8, but the agency has had very low numbers on all announcements nationwide. High school students who are currently 17 but will be 18 by the start dates next spring are encouraged to apply, and numbers of applicants for Forest Service jobs now are so low that chances of a hire are pretty good.

sample federal firefighter jobs currently open
A random sample of federal firefighter jobs currently open

Most of the current openings are for temporary low-pay seasonal jobs. AND — new this year — seasonals will be drug tested. Used to be just permanent hires were, and this new barrier to employment probably has nothing to do with the falling numbers of applicants and other recruitment difficulties. In the table above, most of those with no wage listed are paid on an annual salary basis or are permanent jobs. New applicants with no experience who are willing to move anywhere and really rough it can probably get on this year.

And really rough it might mean living in your car or your own tent dozens of miles from the nearest “town” which is dozens of miles from a real town. They say that doing without the basics will build character, but it can also build issues with your physical and mental health.

Then there’s pay — or the lack of it. Fast-food workers in California are now paid a minimum of $20 an hour. The U.S. sent over $3.3 billion in foreign assistance to Israel in 2022, and $1.4 billion to Afghanistan, but starting jobs for federal firefighters in the U.S.  still pay about 16 bucks, and far too many of those firefighters can’t afford even basic housing.

This is by no means a new issue. Nearly three years ago in the spring of 2021, Bill Gabbert wrote that hundreds of permanent firefighting positions were vacant — just in California. The agency’s difficulties back then in recruiting and hiring seasonal and permanent firefighters meant that multiple hotshot crews did not qualify to respond to a fire with 18 personnel — the minimum required by interagency standards.

“More than a dozen FS fire engines in the state are completely unstaffed,” he wrote, “or instead of seven days a week coverage they have cut back to only five. Thirty modules of FS hand crews, dozers, or water tenders in California have been shut down due to a shortage of employees.” He said then that the gaps in staffing were caused by two main factors — difficulty in hiring new personnel, and loss of experienced firefighters leaving the agency for better pay and working conditions elsewhere. 

From a report released May 13, 2021 by the Incident Workforce Development Group (IWDG):

Today, critical challenges in rostering and managing IMTs is leading to a decrease in the number of teams available for an increasing number of complex incidents.

In the past five years there have been multiple occasions where all available IMTs have been assigned to large fires. Local units have had to face the consequences of managing a complex incident without the services of an IMT.

The situation now has certainly not improved since 2021; fire season is not likely to somehow get cooler and shorter in 2024 and there’s not likely to be a big pay raise either.

For 2022 the IWDG reported that we had just over 3,500 IMT members, with 1,140 of them classed as Command & General Staff.

IMT Command & General staff by position and employment type
IMT Command & General staff by position and employment type

The real eye-opener is team membership by agency. Unless other federal and state agencies are going to greatly boost their personnel numbers on the federal incident management teams, the drops in USFS hires may put a serious pinch on the numbers (and qualifications) of those teams.

IMT membership by agency
U.S. Forest Service employees make up just about half of all the members of incident management teams, with the BLM and state and local government employees combined not even close to that.

State and local government employees account for not quite 25 percent of IMT members, and AD hires account for about 17 percent.

A diminished capacity in fielding and assigning IMTs for megafires (and/or those that threaten major clusters of residential areas, e.g. the 2018 Camp Fire or the 2020 Labor Day fires) will mean that the burden will fall more on local and state resources for management of those fires, which in many cases will mean larger fires and larger safety risks for crews, aircraft, and other resources — not to mention local residents.

Opinion: Rebuttal to Forest Service Deputy Chief’s statement

Firefighter with chainsaw
Firefighter with chainsaw. NWCG photo.

(Editor’s note: this was written by a person who asked to remain anonymous.)

After reading the press release from Jaelith Hall-Rivera, I felt a need to reply. And I want to thank Wildfire Today for running my opinion here.

Jaelith Hall-Rivera is the Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry, and her boss is the Chief of the US Forest Service, Randy Moore. Jaelith’s department is Fire and Aviation Management, which houses the wildfire programs that firefighters work. There is no excuse for her testimony to differ from her bosses testimony, yet that is exactly what happened. It’s almost as if Jaelith’s press release came out before Chief Moore testified the previous day in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee. While Jaelith assured California representatives that they were on pace to have full staffing in California, just 30 days later Chief Moore testified that California, Oregon and Washington may be 50% staffed, something Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley called, “a scary situation.”

Multiple articles have been published since Jaelith’s testimony on April 5th, pointing out that she falsely painted a rosy picture to legislators when the situation was dire. Read excellent articles about the testimony from NBC News, Thomson Reuters and BuzzFeed, and listen to the audio of an NPR interview with the BuzzFeed reporter.

Watch all the testimonies from April 5th, to April 27th, to May 4th and see how they change.

Jaelith testified on April 5th that their goal for staffing was 11,300 wildland firefighters, stating “and that is an increase.” But looking at a memo from Jaelith last fall, she claims that the USFS provided bonuses to 11,300 wildland firefighters (GS3-9 only) last year. So even if they are at 90% of that now, then that represents a 10% LOSS at minimum. Something is wrong here: either Jaelith lied about the numbers, or the USFS sent bonuses to a lot of people last year that should not have received them. Either way, it doesn’t instill confidence in the Forest Service Management.

There is a lie somewhere, and the misrepresentation to Representative Porter is infuriating for a workforce. Claiming we are on pace to be fully staffed when the spring fire hire event had not even started is misrepresenting the truth, at best. Especially when the same Fire Hire event in 2021 only netted an additional 56 hires. Why would this year be any different when the work environment and pay have continued to devolve?

Finally, Randy Moore decided to do some damage control and admit that although they were at 90% nationally, in some areas such as California, Oregon and Washington, staffing was as low as 50%. Again, that’s a shocking statement, but the numbers still don’t add up.

California makes up about 50% of the USFS firefighting workforce, so if they are near 50%, as well as Oregon and Washington, then how can we realistically be above 60-75% staffing nationally? This is 4th grade math: averages.

As a workforce, we simply want truth and transparency. That’s really the minimum. There can’t be that many FMOs in the USFS. Tell each of them to spend 30 minutes entering in the data from their district so we know exactly what positions are vacant. And make this database public and searchable. This database would take a GS6 a day or two to complete, and another 30-60 minutes for each FMO to fill out. Until this project is completed, we can assume the USFS either has no idea what their staffing level is, or they are lying about it.

I want to offer solutions whenever I offer criticism, so here are a few more:

1. Explain very clearly what the holdup is with the funded infrastructure pay raises, and what your plan is for payments including backpay as stated by law.

2. Explain your goal for what a career ladder looks like, even if it doesn’t become reality. Will we be able to have a living wage? Or should we get out now?

3. Start showing some receipts. Show you care. Why are NFFE and Grassroots Wildland Firefighters lobbying the Secretary of Labor instead of our own agency? Why are senators asking for OWCP reforms instead of our own agency? My friend was seriously injured and the USFS told him to call a charity. Is that acceptable to those in the Washington Office?

4. Rebuild the credibility of the USFS Washington Office by including an average employee (GS5-7) on all planning and workforce related meetings. Allow them to represent the workforce, and to the workforce. This would be a detail assignment

5. Explain exactly how we can increase not only our female participation in the workforce (6% of Fire workforce), but other minorities as well as LGBTQ individuals and what actionable items are happening now to make that happen.

6. Credibility only comes with transparency. Our workforce has never been more united and connected through shared struggle and technology. We have more knowledge of the situation than our predecessors and can see through the misinformation and deceit. We will not sit by idly or submit to threats from the DC office. Accountability, authenticity and transparency are not optional anymore.

I understand that the USFS did not ask for these new reforms in classification and pay, but they are here now, and our workforce needs them. But not just firefighters, the whole USFS workforce needs to be brought into the modern federal workforce that exists seemingly in every other agency.

I am optimistic that better times are ahead, but our leadership needs to show their hand a bit more, and offer some hope and motivation for those of us that are putting our physical and mental health on the line every single day for our employer and our country.

Analysis finds that federal wildland firefighters can’t afford to live in most Western counties

Firefighters on the Hermits Peak & Calf Canyon Fire
Firefighters on the Hermits Peak & Calf Canyon Fire May, 2022. Photo by Rickie Cooper, Security Fire Protection District, Colorado.

An analysis of their pay and costs of living found that federal wildland firefighters can’t afford to live in most counties in the Western United States. The study was conducted by a seasonal wildland firefighter with a background in government budgeting and financing who is currently pursuing a Master’s in Public Policy. It can shed light on some of the reasons firefighters are leaving the federal agencies in large numbers and why Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said last week that only 50 percent of Forest Service firefighter positions are filled in some Western areas.

The analysis for GS03 through GS09 firefighters assumed that they work 680 hours of overtime each year, which in a six-month fire season works out to 26 overtime hours each week. It is not unusual for them to work more than 1,000 O/T hours in what has become a normal year, but it can be much less in a very slow fire year. Working extremely long hours away from home with few days off is another reason why firefighters are getting burned out, suicide rates are very high, and family life is challenging.

If the analysis only considered base salary with no overtime, it is likely that the results would have been far different.

A county was considered affordable if it fell within what was described as the common “50-30-20” personal budgeting strategy. This strategy says that 50 percent of someone’s income should be spent on necessities, 30 percent on non-essential purchases, and 20 percent on savings / retirement.

Below are the first five paragraphs of the three-page analysis. You can download the full Microsoft Word document here.

Introduction

Advocacy groups like the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and National Federation of Federal Employees have spent the last several years highlighting the pay and retention issues facing the wildland firefighting workforce. These efforts were successful when a roughly 50 percent pay increase for federal wildland firefighters was included in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure bill.

However, federal wildland firefighters have yet to see this money hit their paychecks. One reason for this delay is that the bill included language that the pay increase would only apply to “difficult to recruit / retain” locations. Although Congress intended this pay increase to apply to every wildland firefighter, there are reports that the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Interior are looking for a “data-based” justification that may cut some wildland firefighters out of the intended raise. The U.S. Forest Service reported they are conducting “initial analysis comparing average federal and state wages and house purchasing power for firefighters (delineated to common wildland fire geographic areas) … to determine a ‘specified geographic area that is difficult to recruit or retain.’”

This analysis [conducted by the firefighter] compared the salaries of the 2022 GS03 to GS09 pay rates to three cost of living factors: the price of a 1 bedroom rental, monthly food costs, and the total monthly costs of owning a car. Since wildland firefighters rely heavily on overtime and hazard pay, this analysis assumed a firefighter works a six-month season with about 680 hours of overtime but 0 hours of hazard pay. Counties were determined to be affordable if less than 50 percent of salaries went to cost of living. Healthcare, childcare, utility, and retirement costs were not included in this analysis. See end of report for details on methodology.

Results

This analysis found that the average cost of living in western counties was $2304 a month. The most expensive county with significant federal public lands presence was Skamania County, just northeast of Portland, Oregon at $3137 a month (Gifford-Pinchot National Forest). Sierra County, south of Albuquerque, New Mexico (Gila National Forest) was the least expensive at $1742 a month.

The majority of Western counties were not determined to be affordable on a GS03-GS09 salary, since living expenses far exceeded 50 percent of wildland firefighter salaries. The following table shows what percent of income a federal wildland firefighter at different GS levels would expect to spend on basic needs across the Western U.S.

Forest Service Deputy Chief lists her goals for Fire and Aviation Management

Deputy Chief Jaelith Hall-Rivera, State and Private Forestry, U.S. Forest Service
Deputy Chief Jaelith Hall-Rivera, State and Private Forestry, U.S. Forest Service. USFS photo.

In a May 5 post published on the U.S. Forest Service’s “Leadership Corner”, the person who oversees Fire and Aviation Management in the agency, Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry Jaeligh Hall-Rivera, laid out a list of improvements she wants to see for Forest Service firefighters. Here is a summary:

  • “Ensure our firefighters are paid equally for the difficult job they do”
  • “Increase our firefighting capacity, this year and beyond”
  • “We must do something about the critical affordable housing shortages”
  • “We must also build sustainable career paths for wildland firefighters”
  • “A permanent pay increase, a job series that recognizes the unique and hazardous work firefighters do, upward career mobility, a safe, harassment-free work environment and a resilient work-life balance”
  • “Bringing more women into the wildland fire workforce and removing obstacles to help them thrive there”
  • “A sustainable, long-term solution for increased pay”
  • “I am personally committed to making these changes”
  • “I will be hosting a ‘FAM to boots’ session where I can share our most recent information and progress on these efforts”

Near the end of the essay Ms. Hall-Rivera wrote, “Please be assured, we are fully backing all these changes to continue improving our wildland fire system.”

She linked to an update that was posted February 2 about the efforts toward addressing firefighter pay and classification, initiatives that are required by an act of Congress passed in 2021. The Office of Personnel Management ordered that the work on a new Wildland Firefighter occupational series be completed “by May.” The February update stated that concerning pay, the “Goal is to have increased payments into paychecks by this summer, either by implementing this provision or using the awards payments model employed last year if we can’t fully implement this provision in FY 22.”

Before a Congressional committee on April 5, Ms. Hall-Rivera testified that a firefighter hiring event “went very well” and that they were “on pace” to meet the hiring targets. It turns out that the event had not started yet.

Before a different Committee on May 5 her boss, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore, testified that their goal is to hire 11,300 firefighters nationwide and the current level is at 10,200, or 90 percent. He said in some areas the agency has only reached 50 percent of their staffing goal.

In her May 5 post, Ms. Hall-Rivera addressed, to a degree, the conflicting testimonies:

The information on the status of our fire hiring events I used at that time left some wondering if we are up to speed here in Washington, DC. Let me update the record on the emerging picture from those hiring events. As of mid-April, we are at 90% of our planned 11,300 wildland firefighters (including those currently onboarding and offers pending).

Our Take

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry from his book "The Little Prince"

Few details were offered about how, when, and by whom this long list of initiatives would be accomplished, other than the efforts toward a new Occupational Series and firefighter pay. Using phrases like, “We must do something about…” can lead the reader to presume that very little thought has gone toward that particular goal. Although “goal” may be too lofty a description. “Wish” might be more appropriate.

Having been involved in many meetings and planning sessions where objectives were clearly articulated, I know that little gets done unless:

  1. A person is appointed to lead the effort, and they are given the resources needed to get it done.
  2. A completion date is specified, to which they are held.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Brian.

Reporter covering the firefighter staffing issues interviewed by NPR

wildland firefighter with hose
Wildland firefighter. NWCG photo.

On Monday National Public Radio’s flagship station in Southern California, KCRW, interviewed Brianna Sacks, a Buzzfeed News reporter who has been covering the hiring and retention problems faced by the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies that have wildland fire responsibilities.

“The burnout is really real for these firefighters who are making no money. They make their living doing thousands of hours of overtime and they still can’t afford to make ends meet,” Sacks tells KCRW. “They’ve been leaving en masse, hemorrhaging firefighters to go to CalFire, PG&E, or private sector jobs. And they’ve also been part of the great resignation with the pandemic.”

You can listen to the entire 8-minute interview by clicking below.

Forest Service facing difficulties hiring firefighters

McBride Fire
McBride Fire in southern New Mexico. From Melissa Gibbs KRQE video April 12, 2022.

When the US Forest Service Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry testified before members of Congress on April 5 that a firefighter hiring event “went very well”, the event had not started yet.

Jaelith Hall-Rivera, US Forest Service Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry
Jaelith Hall-Rivera, US Forest Service Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry, testified April 5 before a House Committee.

“We just completed an additional fire hire event in California at the end of March and those numbers are still coming in,” Ms. Jaelith Hall-Rivera said. “I do think we are on pace. By all accounts that hiring event went very well. Importantly what we are seeing is a very high acceptance rate in our permanent and seasonal permanent firefighting positions, which is what we want.”

In an article published today, Brianna Sacks of BuzzFeed News reported that the hiring event actually began April 11, six days after Ms. Hall-Rivera’s testimony, and is scheduled to go through April 29.

Ms. Hall-Rivera’s statement was in response to a series of questions from Rep. Katie Porter from California. You can watch this exchange in the video of the hearing we posted April 5 as part of a summary of the testimony before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands. Rep. Porter’s excellent questions begin at 138:35.

Below are excerpts from the BuzzFeed article:

A Forest Service spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the deputy chief made an “error” because she “didn’t have all the information in front of her.”

“There are several hiring events throughout the year, and I think she was thinking of a different one in a different region,” the spokesperson said, but he did not provide specifics as to which one that might have been. The spokesperson also did not have hiring numbers that might back up Hall-Rivera’s assurances.

Interviews with firefighters in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and California, as well as internal communications, hiring data, org charts, and surveys from the nonprofit Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, also tell a different story.

For example, in a Feb. 15 meeting hosted and attended by senior Washington officials, fire directors from across the US shared their issues with hiring, according to meeting notes obtained by BuzzFeed News. In New Mexico, where fires are currently raging, leaders said multiple hotshot crews would not be fully staffed. In the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, leaders said there is a “lack of candidates” and they are “unable to staff seven days in many places.” There is a “continued decline of folks to do the work.”

As California, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Colorado gear up for fire season, interviews with three Forest Service employees familiar with hiring say the situation is grim. Without a serious staffing push, engines will sit idle, helicopters won’t be able to fly daily, crews won’t be able to start the season on time, and those who have worked multiple seasons in the field aren’t sure how much more they can stretch themselves without falling apart, they said. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, which also recently investigated systemic staffing issues, highlighted retention issues due to pay and housing.

In parts of Montana and Idaho, which had 700 seasonal workers last year, only 460 have returned for this fire season, a source familiar with the numbers said. And after last year’s Fire Hire, California had filled only 56 of 781 open positions, according to data obtained by BuzzFeed News. As of April 8, two days before this year’s hiring push, California had more than 1,560 vacancies, according to a review of the state’s openings.

More and more articles like this are being published documenting the hiring and retention difficulties that face the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

From Thomson Reuter Foundation News, April 25, 2022:

An engine captain involved in temporary hiring in northern California indicated that almost all Forest Service forests in the area expected to have less than 65% of full staffing for firefighters this year, some below 50%, according to a federal firefighting source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Fundamentally, people don’t want to take jobs because they can’t find a place to stay,” [Kelly] Martin [of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters] said.

One female wildland firefighter – who lives out of her camper in California to save on rent – said proposals to increase base pay would not make up for the lack of an attractive career path for more experienced firefighters.

“Just raising the wages for those coming into fire is not going to be enough to keep people around,” she said, asking not to be named.