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Draft Infrastructure bill includes a raise for Federal wildland firefighters and new job series

Bill GabbertJune 18, 2021June 18, 2021Uncategorizedlegislation, opinion, pay11 Comments

Proposes a new Wildland Fire Manager job series

The draft of a bill being worked on by a bipartisan group of Senators includes a $20,000 raise for some Federal wildland firefighters and a new job series.

The provisions are part of an infrastructure bill written by Senator Manchin and nine other Senators from both parties. The total scope of the legislation could spend $1 trillion or more. About $3.5 billion would be appropriated for wildland fire programs in the US Forest Service and the four land management agencies in the Department of the Interior.

One of the provisions would appropriate $600 million to give some firefighters a $20,000 bump in salary. The amount would be the same, regardless of their regular pay grade. For those working less than year-round, the raise would be prorated — work for six months and receive an increase of $10,000, for example. The catch is, it would only apply to firefighters whose pay is “lower than the minimum wage of the applicable State, or if the position is located in a location where it is difficult to recruit or to retain a wildland firefighter or wildland fire manager.” The bill does not specify who would decide if those conditions exist, but it could be argued that it is difficult to recruit and retain Federal wildland firefighters in most locations.

The bill would also have the Department of Agriculture work with the Office of Personnel Management to “develop a distinct ‘wildland fire manager’ occupational series.” Those presently employed would have the option of moving to the new series, but it would not be required.

On June 16 a group of 20 Senators released a statement saying they support the bipartisan infrastructure package. Of the 20, 11 are Republicans. If they all actually vote for the legislation, it would pass –if all Democrats are also in favor, which is not certain. Some have indicated they will oppose the bill which they say does not do enough to fight climate change or income inequality. If any Democrats oppose the plan, more than 10 Republicans would need to back it for it to hit the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation in the Senate. But it is key that Senator Manchin, Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and a Democrat who frequently votes with Republicans, had a large part in drafting the bill.

The Associated Press reported that President Biden told reporters yesterday he had yet to see the emerging proposal from the group but remained hopeful a bipartisan agreement could be reached, despite weeks of on-again, off-again talks over his more robust $1.7 billion American Jobs Plan.

The 423-page bill has many other fire-related provisions. All of the funds listed below, except as noted, will be for both the US Forest Service and the four land management agencies in the Department of the Interior.

$100 million to work with the National Weather Service to establish and operate a satellite program to rapidly detect and report wildfire starts in areas where the two Departments have the responsibility to suppress wildfires.
Convert no fewer than 1,000 seasonal wildland firefighters to full-time year-round Wildland Fire Manager positions and reduce hazardous fuels on Federal land at least 800 hours per year. (Note from Bill: 800 hours would be 38 percent of each firefighters base time, a major change in their job duties. The $600 million allotted for the salary increase includes enough to pay for the conversion of the seasonals to permanent full-time.)
$20 million to acquire technology and infrastructure for each Type 1 and Type 2 incident management team to maintain interoperability with respect to the radio frequencies used by any responding agency.
$30 million to provide financial assistance to States and units of local government to establish and operate Reverse-911 telecommunication systems.
$100 million for the Secretary of the Interior to establish and implement a pilot program to provide to local governments financial assistance for the acquisition of slip-on tanker [fire engine] units to establish fleets of vehicles that can be quickly converted and operated as fire engines.
$20 million for research conducted under the Joint Fire Science Program.
$50 million for conducting mechanical thinning and timber harvesting in an ecologically appropriate manner that focuses, to the extent practicable, on small-diameter trees.
$500 million for the Secretary of Agriculture to award community wildfire defense grants to at-risk communities.
$500 million for prescribed fires.
$500 million for developing or improving potential control locations, including installing fuel breaks, with a focus on shaded fuel breaks when ecologically appropriate.
$200 million for contracting or employing crews of laborers to modify and remove flammable vegetation on Federal land and use the resulting materials, to the extent practicable, to produce biochar, including through the use of the CivilianClimate Corps.
$200 million for post-fire restoration activities that are implemented not later than 3 years after the date that a wildland fire is contained.

The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters organization has been very active in recent months, advocating for pay for federal firefighters that is competitive with the companies and agencies that are luring personnel to leave the Federal government to come work for far better pay and benefits. When told about the draft legislation, Kelly Martin, their President, said they have been advocating for elimination of the 25 percent hazard duty pay when working on a fire and a 50 percent increase in base salary, which she thought would be more appropriate than a $10,000 to $20,000 boost in pay. The organization also wants their firefighters who are classified as Forestry or Range Technicians correctly placed into a Wildland Firefighter job series. Ms. Martin said that lower and mid-level firefighters are not managers, so they should not be in a Wildland Fire Manager job series as proposed in the draft legislation.

My Take:

This bill has a long way to go before it is voted on, so the provisions could change. That will provide a window for firefighters to contact their Senators to express their opinion, ask for modifications of the content, or add items not included.

Changing the firefighters’ job titles from Forestry or Range Technician to Wildland Fire Manager is not a major step forward. It is too vague and might be confused with managing a less than full suppression fire. Like Ms. Martin said, it incorrectly describes rookie and mid-level firefighters as “managers”, and could lead to arguments about firefighter retirement and pay suitable for firefighters. They need a new Wildland Firefighter job series with a new pay schedule commensurate with their duties and competitive in the field.

This proposed legislation, which is yet to be introduced, does not have everything many firefighters are hoping for, but it may be like the infrastructure specifications that are not everything that some Democrats want. Unless there is more specific legislation being seriously proposed that would better address firefighter issues, it could be worthy of support if some of the provisions are changed. But it leaves out a more reasonable pay plan, presumptive illnesses, better support for mental and physical health issues, and a larger workforce to match the “new normal” very large fires which threaten homeland security.

What do we owe wildland firefighters?

BillJune 15, 2021June 16, 2021Uncategorizedopinion, pay10 Comments

By Jonathon Golden

“It’s like having gasoline out there,” said Brian Steinhardt, forest fire zone manager for Prescott and Coconino national forests in Arizona, in a recent AP story about the increasingly fire-prone West.

Now something else is happening — and at the worst possible time.

Federal firefighters are leaving the workforce and taking their training and experience with them. The inability of federal agencies to offer competitive pay and benefits is creating hundreds of wildland firefighting vacancies.

Vacancies, of course, limit how much federal firefighters can do. If Western communities want to be protected, they need to ensure that their firefighters receive better pay and benefits.

In my 11 years of work as a wildland firefighter, I’ve managed aircraft, trained people and run fires myself, but I also did outreach and recruitment for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. I know how hard it is for hiring managers to make 2,000 hours of grueling work, crammed into six exhausting months, sound appealing when the pay is $13.45/hour. The pay doesn’t come close to matching the true demands or everyday dangers of the job.

Federal wildland firefighters, by necessity, are transient workers. During the fire season — now nearly year-round — they must be available to travel anywhere in the United States at any time. And to advance in their career, they have to move to other federal duty stations to gain more qualifications.

Finding affordable housing has always been a problem for career firefighters on a federal salary. To make matters worse, federal agencies revoked the “Transfer of Station” stipend for career employees, which helped offset the cost of moving. Just recently, a national forest supervisor also revoked a “boot stipend.” It might sound minor, but it isn’t: When you’re in the firefighting business, boots tough enough to save your life can easily cost you $500.

Some states aren’t relying on the government to act quickly. “We aren’t just waiting for the next crisis to hit,”said California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in establishing an $80.74 million Emergency Fund that delivers an additional 1,256 seasonal firefighters to boost CALFIRE’s ranks. This Emergency Fund is in addition to the governor’s $1 billion budget request for California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan.

In Washington, state legislators unanimously passed a $125 million package that will enable the state’s Natural Resources Department to hire 100 more firefighters. The legislation furthers the state’s efforts to restore forest health and creates a $25 million fund to ensure community preparedness around the state.

Utah’s House Bill 65, recently signed into law, appropriates money to help Utah’s communities offset the cost of wildfire suppression. Most importantly, it commissions a study to evaluate the current pay plan for firefighters within Utah’s Natural Resources Department.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Casey Snider, was amazed to learn that frontline wildland firefighters make more money at McDonald’s: “These positions are critical,” he said. “They are the first ones on fires.” This year, Utah has already had five times the number of wildfires it normally experiences in a year.

And firefighters are organizing and speaking up. The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters is working to halt the exodus of firefighters from federal agencies by advocating for pay parity with state and local fire protection agencies. The group also supports initiatives to assist the physical and mental health of firefighters and their families. The statistics they highlight are shocking: Wildland firefighters have a suicide rate 30 times higher than the average. They also experience high incidences of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer.

There is talk on the federal level of creating a permanent, year-round firefighting workforce. I think this is a necessary step, but it won’t fix the workforce capacity issue unless increased pay and benefits are used to encourage the recruitment and retention of federal firefighters.

We all know that today’s wildfires are longer, more damaging and more frequent than ever before. We also know that men and women are putting their lives on the line for less than they’d earn at a McDonald’s.

Our firefighters do all this to protect our lives, our forests and our communities. We owe them at least a living wage and a chance for a healthy life. I hope more states and legislators will start paying attention. This is a debt that needs to be paid.

Jonathon Golden is a writer for Writers on the Range, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Park City and has 12 seasons as a wildland firefighter. He resigned in 2019 to prioritize his family and find a sustainable career. In 2020 Jonathon started Golden Group, LLC, a consulting company that focuses on domestic and international conservation initiatives as well as national security.

Hiring and retention in the US Forest Service is a growing issue

Bill GabbertMay 20, 2021May 20, 2021Uncategorizedopinion, pay, recruiting36 Comments

Pine Gulch Fire Colorado — Firefighters being briefed on the Pine Gulch Fire in Colorado, August 21, 2020. InciWeb.

A senior-level wildfire management person in the U.S. Forest Service (FS) told Wildfire Today that there are hundreds of vacant permanent firefighting positions in California. The agency’s difficulties in recruiting and hiring seasonal and permanent firefighting personnel has resulted in multiple hotshot crews not qualifying 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, or instead of seven days a week coverage they have cut back to only five. (Check with your local fire department and ask which days of the week they staff their fire engines.) Thirty modules of FS hand crews, dozers, or water tenders in California have been shut down due to a shortage of employees, according to our source.

(Read more: Forest Service issues statement saying in part, “Federal wages for firefighters have not kept pace with wages offered by state, local and private entities in some areas of the United States.”)

The personnel issues are caused by two primary factors, difficulty in hiring, and experienced firefighters leaving the organization for better pay and working conditions.

Seasonal federal firefighters in California are generally hired in January and start working in mid-May or mid-June. The centralized hiring process now being used has been heavily criticized as inefficient.

A look at the system for advertising vacant permanent firefighting positions in the federal agencies, USA JOBS, shows a large number of unfilled FS positions. Here is a sample from this week:

Supervisory Forestry Technician, Fire, GS-7-8, USFS, 43 locations.
Supervisory Forestry Technician, Interagency Hotshot Crew Superintendent, GS-9, USFS, 43 locations.
Forestry Technician, hand crew, GS-7, USFS, 17 locations.
Fire Prevention Officer, GS-10-11, USFS, 61 locations.
Forestry Technician, Dispatch, GS-4-7, USFS, 56 locations.

Some of the FS fire jobs at the website are open for a few months or a year, and others are basically continually open with no end dates. Hiring of permanent fire personnel can go on throughout the year as additional positions become vacant.

The entry level wildfire job with the federal agencies is usually a GS-3 working under the title “Forestry Technician,” which receives $13.32 per hour, almost $2 less than the minimum wage sought by some politicians recently. In California a state agency that competes with the federal government for hiring firefighters pays about double that rate. A recent survey found that the first and second most cited reason for leaving federal firefighting organizations is to move to a job with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Suppression or local municipal fire departments.

Difficulties staffing Incident Management Teams

Skilled fire personnel leaving the federal land management agencies have made it difficult to find employees qualified and willing to serve on Incident Management Teams (IMT) that are mobilized to suppress large wildfires and manage other incidents.

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

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.

Firefighters in the Department of the Interior

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told Wildfire Today that they do not anticipate having a large number of vacant firefighting positions. (Wildfire Today was unable to confirm this claim):

The Department of the Interior is on track to have available a total of approximately 5,000 firefighters, a similar number to what was available last season.

The initial bureau hiring targets are:

Bureau of Indian Affairs – 600
Bureau of Land Management – 3,450
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – 530
National Park Service – 930

How many firefighters does the FS have?

The Forest Service, which is in the Department of Agriculture, has been saying for years that they have 10,000 fire personnel. Wildfire Today filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the the agency on December 10, 2019 to obtain the actual number of firefighters. We are still waiting to receive factual information.

Widespread news coverage

Three major news organizations have published articles this week about the recruitment and retention of federal wildland firefighters. Below are excerpts:

NBC News:

Despite the increased threat, the Forest Service does not expect to meet its goal of hiring 5,200 federal firefighters in California this year.”It will be below that number,” said Bob Baird, director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region. “With hiring challenges and attrition, it could be a lower percentage than that, but we won’t know until we finish our hiring process.”

“California is ground zero for attrition,” said Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service officer who is the executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which advocates for federal fire personnel. “We’re losing people at an accelerated rate because there are so many other opportunities.”

PEW Trusts:

The [FS] projected a shortfall of 313 firefighters in Region 5 this year, at least 8% fewer firefighters than it aimed to employ. The shortfall is frustrating for many in California’s state government, which relies on the federal service to help put out wildfires, but has little control over staffing levels.

Thom Porter, the chief of California’s state fire agency, CAL FIRE, said he’s had regular conversations with California-based Forest Service officials about staffing this year. He said he’s most worried that when the agency’s teams are moved to fight fires in other states, the Forest Service won’t have enough people, or enough experienced people, to backfill those roles in California.

“If they’re unable to hire, if they’re unable to keep staff on when we’re having our most critical periods, it is a public safety risk,” Porter said of the Forest Service. “Because we so much rely on each other that—there isn’t a single agency in California that has all of the resources it needs for a major incident of any type. It’s all hands on deck.”

Los Angeles Times (subscription):

Jon Groveman, a spokesman for the Forest Service in California, said the agency attempts to staff 46 hotshot crews in the state annually, but it hasn‘t been able to fill all of those positions for several years, leaving it with between 35 and 40 crews. The agency expects “a similar number of crews to be staffed this fire year,” he wrote in an email, adding that “some crews for various reasons (mainly due to staffing challenges) will not be able to attain Hotshot standards.”

Hotshot crews that have lost that designation include the Horseshoe Meadow Hotshots in the Sequoia National Forest and the Modoc Hotshots in the Modoc National Forest, both of which the agency considers “unstaffed.”

A Forest Service job posting earlier this spring for a full-time, experienced firefighter in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Jackson, Wyoming, warned applicants that real estate costs were high. It suggested a few affordable options, including Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit home builder that helps low-income people get into new homes.

FEMA awards grants to reduce risks from wildfires on communities

Bill GabbertMay 1, 2021UncategorizedFEMA, FireWise, fuel management, grants, opinion6 Comments

Two of three appear to be well deserved

Beaver Creek fire saved structure — Beaver Creek Fire, Colorado, 2016. InciWeb.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has recently awarded millions of dollars through their Disaster Mitigation Grant program.

Boulder County, Colorado

Boulder County will receive a $1.2 million Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant for two wildfire mitigation actions. The first is to create defensible space for approximately 500 properties. The second is hazardous fuels reduction in an area of about 160 acres that will provide further protection on 27 properties where defensible space creation was previously completed.

Homeowner efforts to create defensible space will not just be a one-time effort. They will join the county’s wildfire mitigation program, Wildfire Partners, to support continued maintenance of defensible space over the long-term and conduct comprehensive mitigation efforts to effectively reduce wildfire risk in a community that has been severely affected by wildfire.

FEMA is providing 75 percent of the project costs, a total of $1,215,630. Funding is provided through FEMA’s Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, which is designed to assist states, U.S. territories, federally-recognized tribes, and local communities in implementing a sustained pre-disaster natural hazard mitigation program. The goal is to reduce overall risk to the population and structures from future hazard events, while also reducing reliance on federal funding in future disasters.

Ashland, Oregon

The city of Ashland, Oregon will receive a $3 million Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant to create wildfire defensible space around 1,100 homes and to replace 23 wood shake roofs with ignition-resistant roof material.

The City of Ashland in Oregon’s Jackson County is in a high wildfire risk zone. In the fall of 2020, neighboring communities of Talent and Phoenix were devastated by the Almeda Fire, which burned 2,977 acres and destroyed over 2,300 structures.

This mitigation project will help protect structures from wildfires and will help homes in the Ashland area comply with recommended local best practices for wildfire risk reduction. Replacing wood shake roofs and providing defensible space to structures reduces the risk of wildfire spread and diminishes the likelihood of wildfires starting from embers. Once these highly flammable roofs are replaced, these types of roofs will no longer be allowed in Ashland.

The City is contributing a $1 million cost-share, making the total value of this grant $4 million.

The project includes hiring a project manager, preliminary assessments of identified homes, surveys for vegetation removal, scheduling and training of pre-approved contractors, removal of vegetation, and reconstruction of roofs.

Rolling Hills, California

A $1.1 million grant is going to the Los Angeles community of Rolling Hills. The funds will replace overhead power lines and poles with nearly 2,000 feet of underground cables and relocate transformers to an area with less wildfire risk. The Los Angeles Fire Department identified the area as a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, the highest designation with the greatest fire risk.

The $1.5 million project includes a $1.1 million grant from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), with the remaining $381,000 from non-federal sources.

Our take

As we wrote last September, grants to mitigate wildfire risk and improve community resiliency is a worthwhile investment:

Provide grants to homeowners that are in areas with high risk from wildland fires. Pay a portion of the costs of improvements or retrofits to structures and the nearby vegetation to make the property more fire resistant. This could include the cost of removing some of the trees in order to have the crowns at least 18 feet apart if they are within 30 feet of the structures — many homeowners can’t afford the cost of complete tree removal.

But the limited amount of Federal taxpayer funds available must be distributed where they can get the most bang for the buck and assist a significant number of residents.

Rolling Hills is a gated community of private roads on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles where the median household income is $239,375 and the poverty rate is 1.6%. The project will reduce wildfire ignitions along 2,000 feet of power lines.

Boulder County has a median household income of $83,019 and a poverty rate of 10.7%. Their grant will mitigate hazards on 527 properties.

Ashland, Oregan has a median income of $56,315 and a poverty rate of 18.4%. More than 1,100 homes will be affected by the project.

Putting 2,000 feet of power lines underground in Rolling Hills could reduce the chance of poorly designed or maintained electrical lines starting fires. But a case could be made that the project should not rank high enough nationwide to prevent other grants from being approved that would have a much greater beneficial effect on larger numbers of people with far less disposable income. In this affluent Los Angeles community improvements on the electrical lines, in this case, should be funded by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

There is probably more than one resident in Rolling Hills who could write a check for the project then go into the backyard and finish their game of tennis.

FEMA has more information about the Pre-Disaster Mitigation and Hazard Mitigation Grant programs.

Opinion: Federal wildland firefighters should be paid at least as much as cafeteria workers

Bill GabbertApril 28, 2021April 28, 2021Uncategorizedopinion, pay22 Comments

The President raised the minimum wage for Federal contractors to $15/hour, which is more than the starting pay for Federal wildland firefighters

Cedar Fire Elko Nevada July 19 wildfire — Firefighters hold a road on the Cedar Fire in Nevada, July 20, 2020. Photo: Mike McMillan/BLM Elko District.

The President signed an Executive Order yesterday requiring Federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage to hundreds of thousands of workers who are on Federal contracts.

From a statement issued by the White House:

These workers are critical to the functioning of the Federal government: from cleaning professionals and maintenance workers who ensure Federal employees have safe and clean places to work, to nursing assistants who care for the nation’s veterans, to cafeteria and other food service workers who ensure military members have healthy and nutritious food to eat, to laborers who build and repair Federal infrastructure.

“I believe no one should work full-time and still live in poverty,” President Joe Biden said in a Twitter post announcing the move.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 for all workers in the United States is long past overdue. The last time it was changed was 13 years ago when it increased from $5.15 per hour to the current rate of $7.25 per hour.

The cleaning professionals and cafeteria workers mentioned in the statement from the White House as examples of Federal contractors who will be covered by the new minimum wage need this new policy. It is extremely difficult to support a family while making less. If they receive a bump in pay when the policy goes into effect January 30, 2022, that’s great for them. And the pay will be adjusted annually based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers.

But let us consider who will not be receiving the minimum pay of $15 an hour — Federal wildland firefighters, roughly 15,000 employees who work under the ridiculous titles of Forestry or Range Technician. Most of them start at the GS-3 level which this year is $13.45 an hour. Many of them will remain a GS-3 for years. When they become a highly skilled firefighter a few years later they might be promoted to a GS-4 making $15.20 an hour, which is less than the starting pay at some McDonald’s outlets.

McDonalds Hiring, $15.50 per hour — From the Sisters, Oregon McDonalds Facebook page, April 22, 2021.

The only way these professional firefighters can even begin to support a family is to work 1,000 hours of overtime each year. This is a physically and emotionally demanding job. Shifts on a going fire are typically 14 to 16 hours leaving only 8 to 10 hours each day when they are off the clock, which is not enough time to rest, recuperate, and take care of personal needs.

Federal wildland firefighters travel across the country going state to state wherever the fires are. When the largest blazes need 5,000 personnel, they may be staffed with individuals from nearly every U.S. state. Being away from home and family for extended periods of time every year puts stresses on the firefighters and their households.

Our opinion

Federal wildland firefighters need to be paid at least as much as cafeteria workers. Men and women defending our country by suppressing fires are grossly underpaid and deserve a large boost in salary. This could slow down the hordes that are quitting to seek a living wage, moving to city, state, and private organizations. Their pay needs to be competitive and commensurate with wages that could be earned doing the same job with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and Pacific Gas and Electric.

Pay for entry level temporary employees, CAL FIRE and Federal wildland firefighters. From Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

Last week the McDonalds in Sisters, Oregon was seeking new employees, offering starting pay of $15.50 to $18.25 and a hiring bonus of $1,000.

These extraordinary employees also need to be reclassified correctly as actual Firefighters, not forestry technicians.

Some efforts are underway, such as the request by nine U.S. Senators for the Government Accountability Office to conduct an assessment of hiring and retention of Federal wildland firefighters at the five Federal agencies responsible for wildland fire.

Tomorrow, April 29 at 1 p.m. EDT, the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, led by Chair Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), will host an oversight hearing titled Wildfire in a Warming World: Opportunities to Improve Community Collaboration, Climate Resilience, and Workforce Capacity. Riva Duncan, now retired from the Fire Staff Officer position on the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon, is scheduled to testify. This could be interesting. You can watch it live, or replay it later.

The video below is the daily White House Press Briefing from April 27, 2021. The first item covered by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is the Executive Order about the new minimum wage for contractors.

Opinion: A USFS firefighter in Oregon can be paid more at McDonald’s

BillApril 18, 2021July 21, 2023UncategorizedBen Elkind, opinion, pay, smokejumpers23 Comments

A view from under a smokejumper canopy

Boise BLM smokejumpers. BLM photo by Carrie Bilbao July 28, 2020.

(This article first appeared at The Oregonian)

By Ben Elkind

I would almost do it for free. The feeling of complete focus and calm after jumping out of the airplane is hard to find elsewhere these days. But the chaos from life and the fire below are making me rethink my career, and that’s a big problem for Oregonians.

I’ve been a smokejumper for the US Forest Service for eight years and worked on the Mt. Hood Hotshot Fire Crew before that. I grew up in Oregon and can’t stand to see the wildfires ravaging our public lands and communities, while the smoke threatens our public health.

The Forest Service employs the largest firefighting force in the west, yet the agency refuses to rise to the challenge of climate change and the growing demand that increased fires, short-staffing and low pay presents for our workforce.

Vacancies throughout the west limit our firefighting ability. Fire engines sit idle and unstaffed in many parts of our state, and the number of “Type-II” incident management teams – charged with managing large fires around the northwest – has decreased from ten to seven since 2014. The teams that remain are short-staffed and spread thin. This is the obvious outcome in a profession that I’ve never heard anyone recommend to their children.

As the cost of living and home prices rise in the west, the Forest Service can no longer retain its employees when starting pay is $13.45 an hour. At the Lincoln City McDonald’s, just west of Otis, another community nearly erased from the map by wildfires, a sign in the window advertised starting pay is $15 an hour. My wife joked that I should apply there for more job security. She’s right. A career with McDonald’s is currently more promising than federal wildland firefighting.

I’m an incident commander with advanced qualifications, supervising dozens of resources and fire crews on fires, yet I’ve never earned more than $20 an hour in my 14 years as a professional wildland firefighter. I make decisions that can cost millions of dollars with lives hanging in the balance, yet I am paid more like a teenager working a summer job than a highly experienced professional. Last summer, I trained someone from Seattle Fire who earned more in two weeks than I earned in a 6-month fire season.

The cost of paying living wages to our firefighters pales by comparison with the costs that devastating wildfires have on our state. The costs in Oregon from the 2020 fires alone are in the billions of dollars, and that doesn’t include the mental toll it took on our citizens. My pregnant wife was home with our toddler duct-taping paper towels on a fan to try to filter the smoke, while I was working on the fire that would burn from Warm Springs past Detroit and toward Portland.

I’ve personally seen the experience level drop rapidly on fires over the past decade as people find work that is more predictable and safer, and affords them a better work/life balance. This leads to higher fire costs simply because we aren’t as experienced at fighting fire as we used to be. When training costs are so high, retention is paramount to fiscal responsibility.

Prescribed burns and hazardous fuels reduction are buzzwords politicians and media use, but the reality is that there aren’t people willing to take on that dangerous job anymore at $13.45 an hour. The limiting factor is staffing.

Fire season in 2021 is now underway in the drought-stricken western U.S., yet there have been no policy changes at the firefighting level, or legislatively.

Talking about wildfires, climate change, prescribed burning is great. But our citizens and firefighting workforce demand action. I ask for your help, to demand a better investment of our money, and to preserve what parts of Oregon we have left for future generations.