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.
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, 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.
Randy Moore, 20th Chief of the U.S. Forest Service.
Forest Service Chief Randy Moore has released what has become in recent years an annual ritual, a Chief’s Letter of Intent.
This year’s version dated April 14 begins with a discussion about the 2021 fire year and the new emphasis on increasing hazardous fuels reduction work by two to four times current levels. (The full document is below.) Then he moved to other subjects.
Suppress, or not suppress fires
Tucked away in a paragraph about COVID is a sideways reference to fire suppression strategy: “Finite resources require making choices, including to commit firefighters only to operations where they have a high probability of success and can operate effectively with no exposure to unnecessary risk to meet reasonable objectives.” Three paragraphs later the Chief mentions “using fire on the landscape”, and then:
I recognize that can be controversial and cause concern. Therefore, we must have a clear understanding of when, where, how and under what conditions we use this tool. We do not have a “let it burn” policy. The Forest Service’s policy is that every fire receives a strategic, risk-based response, commensurate with the threats and opportunities, and uses the full spectrum of management actions, that consider fire and fuel conditions, weather, values at risk, and resources available and that is in alignment with the applicable Land and Resource Management Plan. Line officers approve decisions on strategies and Incident Commanders implement those through tactics in line with the conditions they are dealing with on each incident. We know the dynamic wildland fire environment requires the use of multiple suppression strategies on any incident; however, this year we will more clearly articulate how and when we specifically use fire for resource benefit. The Red Book will be updated to require that during National and/or Regional Preparedness Levels 4 and 5, when difficult trade-off decisions must be made in how to deploy scarce resources most effectively, Regional Forester approval will be required to use this fire management strategy. This is commensurate with Red Book prescribed fire direction during these periods.
Firefighter well-being
The letter from the Chief mentions that high stress working environments and extensive time away from families can affect a firefighter’s physical and psychological resilience.
To help address these very real problems, changes have been made to Chapter 7 of the 2022 Interagency Standards for Fire and Fire Aviation Operations (Red Book) that update work-rest guidelines to require three days of rest for every 14 days worked, excluding travel days, upon return to their home unit.
Pay and a firefighter job series
The paragraph about work-rest guidelines ends with two sentences about firefighter pay and a job series:
Work is also ongoing with the Department of the Interior and the Office of Personnel Management to develop a wildland firefighter series and improve pay parity to better recognize the value of the work done by our wildland firefighters. We will continue to provide information on these efforts as they move forward and will engage with our wildland firefighters to ensure their voices are part of this work.
COVID
The Chief wrote that the Forest Service “will align our COVID-19 mitigation strategies with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with respect to masks and testing of our firefighters.” There was no mention of requiring vaccinations. The text at the CDC link has statements such as, “Layered prevention strategies — like staying up to date on vaccines, screening testing, ventilation and wearing masks — can help limit severe disease and reduce the potential for strain on the healthcare system.”
The letter also says the FS will “continue with small, dispersed fire camps and remote incident management.”
Our take
With difficulties in hiring and retention, and the consumer price index rising by 8.5% over the past 12 months — the largest inflation surge in 40 years — a much broader discussion about pay and a growing unease and dissatisfaction in the firefighter ranks should have been job number one in the Intent letter. Thought should have been given to addressing the inability to fill jobs, skilled firefighters resigning, and positions being vacant for years. Some firefighters are considering this year to be a put up or shut up moment. For them it is important to know exactly where the Chief of the Forest Service, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Administration stand on allowing firefighters to earn a living wage, and what, if any, progress has been made to fix these issues. An honest Report on Conditions is needed — now. This letter, which is meant to be distributed down to the lowest levels, was a squandered opportunity. Maybe these problems have been addressed in another venue, but in this widely circulated missive, just quickly glossing over matters that are critical to the workforce, was a mistake.
In an April 5 hearing before a congressional committee, USFS Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry Jaelith Hall-Rivera said, “I do think we are on pace [to meet the hiring goal of increasing the number of USFS firefighters by 1,300]. We are seeing a very high acceptance rate in our permanent and seasonal permanent firefighting positions.” Maybe Chief Moore is receiving similar rosy information about the state of his workforce.
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“The agency is failing its firefighters on so many levels,” he said
Truckee Hotshots, hiking in. September, 2019. Truckee Hotshots photo.
A wildland firefighter who had worked his way into middle management of the Truckee Interagency Hotshot Crew has publicly resigned. A two-page letter laying out his reasons has been widely circulated, along with a copy of an email written by the Superintendent of the crew, Scott Burghard, discussing the loss of this experienced firefighter. Wildfire Today received both letters from third parties, not the two individuals named in the letters.
Chris Mariano was a GS-6 Squad Boss on Truckee until April 7, 2022. He said drafting the letter was difficult — the best part of his life was working as a hotshot on the Tahoe National Forest, writing:
I prospered — I was all in. I wanted nothing more than to be a hotshot, to be a leader, to care for the land and to be of service. While the sense of purpose and camaraderie remain, I now feel hypocritical to recruit or encourage crew members to work for an agency that is failing to support its fire management programs and thus the public.
The agency is failing its firefighters on so many levels. Classification, pay, work life balance, mental health, presumptive disease coverage, and injury/fatality support. There are efforts to correct some of these issues but for many it is too little too late…We are losing people at a terrifying rate at a time when wildfires burn longer, hotter, more frequently, and with devastating severity.
Mr. Mariano became an expert at operating drones, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), for the US Forest Service and was qualified as an FAA Commercial UAS Operator. He was the first UAS pilot in Region 5 (California) and was certified for UAS aerial ignition, test and evaluation pilot, inspector pilot, and was on a national instructor cadre for UAS aerial ignition. He had hoped to move into a full time UAS position with the Forest Service but as a GS-6 he was not officially qualified to apply.
“I plan to move into the private sector to continue training men and women to operate UAS,” Mr. Marino said, “and assist in the development of unmanned technologies to assist in wildfire suppression and prevention.”
Below is the letter from his supervisor, Scott Burghard, and following that, is a .pdf of the letter from Mr. Marino.
“Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Subject: Another IHC Resignation
“I am distributing the resignation letter of my Squad Boss Chris Mariano. Chris is the employee every supervisor dreams of hiring. His work ethic is unrivaled. His selfless commitment is unbelievable. He has battle tested, boots on the ground operational experience. He was instrumental in bringing UAS to the fireline and introducing technologies to a technologically stagnant environment. He is a creative problem solver. He is a strong communicator. He is intelligent, inclusive, dedicated, committed, passionate, professional… you name it. Chris is the epitome of what the agency should be cultivating as a leader… not losing. The fireline will miss him. The agency will miss him. I will miss him. And my job will be tremendously more challenging without him, and my crew will be less effective and capable because of it.
“Chris’s resignation hits close to home, and very hard. Watching the mass exodus of our operational knowledge is one of the saddest evolutions I have witnessed. Many of my fire assignments have transformed from operationally focused suppression tactics to exercises in preserving human life. We do not have the tacit knowledge, operational competence, or resource capacity to be effective with the scale of wildfire complexity we are facing. Because, we have not supported our Firefighters. We cannot fill our vacancies. In the rare circumstance we are successful at hiring we are replacing training and operational experience with a lower degree of aptitude. Fire behavior, fire size, and fire severity have increased exponentially over the last decade. In contrast, the agency response has been on the opposite trajectory. Every aspect of our wildfire suppression workforce is struggling to retain, recruit, and simply staff. On the ground and in the air. How are we allowing this to happen? Was the devastation of the last few fire seasons not a compelling illustration? How is the threat of entire ecosystems, communities and human life being incinerated not prioritized appropriately? When is the agency going to adequately address staffing, retention and the needs of its wildfire suppression programs? Wildfires certainly aren’t waiting…
“Chris is more than an empty seat in a crew haul. He is more than a vacant name on an org chart. He is more than a statistical loss. His absence will be felt. And the absence of the many somehow incalculable resignations will be felt. His resignation embodies every deficiency that will contribute to the biblical destruction ahead of us.
Personnel from the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior testified Tuesday before a Congressional Committee
Witnesses in the hearing before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, April 5, 2022. L to R: Brian Ferebee (FS), Jaelith Hall-Rivera (FS), Jeff Rupert (Dept. of Interior).
The standard line from the US Forest Service about the number of wildland firefighters in the agency has been 10,000 wildland firefighters nationwide, but in recent years they have been unable to fill all of their positions due to difficulties in recruitment and retention. The San Francisco Chronicle (subscription) reported that in 2021 the number stationed in California dropped from 5,000 in 2019 to 3,956, more than a 20 percent decline.
In a hearing today before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, the Forest Service said they believe they are turning that problem around.
Representative Katie Porter from California asked how many firefighters does the agency need to have. Jaelith Hall-Rivera, USFS Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry said their goal this year is 11,300. That would be 13 percent more than the maximum they have had in recent memory.
When Rep. Porter asked how many they have now, Ms. Hall-Rivera said she didn’t know because they are still hiring.
“We just completed an additional fire hire event in California at the end of March and those numbers are still coming in,” Ms. Hall-Rivera said. “I do think we are on pace [to meet that goal]. 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. We want to be able to convert this workforce to have more or a larger proportion of it to be permanent and a smaller proportion of it be temporary… We think that we will be at the capacity we need at the Forest Service this year.”
“That’s really great to hear,” Rep. Porter said, “because as you know last year according to the National Federation of Federal Employees, about 30 percent of the federal hotshot crews that worked on the front lines of wildfires in California were understaffed. Last year the Forest Service had 60 fire engines in California alone that were idled because of understaffing. I’m very heartened to hear a concrete number, a concrete goal, for what full staffing looks like.”
Rep. Porter asked how much it costs to bring in firefighters from other fire departments when the Forest Service does not have adequate staffing for fire suppression. Ms. Hall-Rivera said she did not have those numbers, but would get back to the Representative. Firefighters from CAL FIRE and municipal fire departments make two to three times what federal wildland firefighters make and they get paid 24 hours a day, “portal to portal”, for weeks on large fires until they are back in their own station. Federal firefighters are usually limited to 16 hours a day, and are forced to take a 30 minute lunch break even when they are on the steep slope of a God-forsaken ridge breathing smoke miles from the nearest road.
Earlier Ms. Hall-Rivera said the Forest Service has lost 40 percent of their non-fire workforce. This reduction in personnel, some of whom were qualified to be assigned to a fire in addition to their regular duties, can increase the difficulty of staffing fires and other incidents.
Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission
Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico asked when members would be appointed to the new Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, which was required by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, H.R.3684, signed by the President on November 15, 2021. The law required that the appointments were to be made by January 14, 2022. Their initial meeting was to be held no later than February 13, 2022.
Ms. Hall-Rivera said the announcement for applications closed last Friday after receiving more than 500 responses. The members will be selected “in a month or two,” she said.
Tamarack Fire and aggressive initial attack
Representative Tom McClintock of California, brought up the subject of the Tamarack Fire in California which was monitored but not suppressed for 13 days while it was very small. It burned at least 15 structures and more than 67,000 acres as it ran from California into Nevada jumping Highway 395 and prompting the evacuation of 2,000 people.
“This is insane,” Rep. McCLintock said, referring to the management of the fire. “Please tell me that you are dropping that policy and you will be vigorously attacking fires on their initial discovery rather than waiting for them to become one of these massive conflagrations.”
“We put out 98 percent of fires on initial attack,” Ms. Hall-Rivera said. “The Tamarack Fire is one of those 2 percent that we were not able to do that because we were resource-limited in the country as a whole.”
“You deliberately sat on it,” Rep. McClintock said. “Can you assure me that henceforth upon discovery of a fire you will order an aggressive initial attack?”
“Yes, Congressman, that is what we do,” said Hall-Rivera.
Goals for fuel treatment
“While the Forest Service’s budget has more than doubled since 2014, the amount of hazardous fuels treatment has remained frustratingly stagnant, only addressing roughly two percent of their needs annually,” said Rep. Herrell. “I am concerned that the recently announced 10-year strategy to combat the wildfire crisis will fall short because not only are the tools not in place to implement this strategy, but the Forest Service is also only relying on only 5 years of funding to execute a 10-year plan. This is especially concerning considering yesterday’s release of the Department of the Interior’s wildfire strategy which is only 5 years.”
“The Infrastructure law was a significant step in the right direction in terms of wildland firefighter compensation, and once again I thank you for your work on that,” Ms. Hall-Rivera replied. “But we need to continue to work together to find a permanent solution to increasing our wildland firefighters’ pay and making other system changes that insure that we can continue to support our firefighters and insure that this is a career that others will pursue in the future.”
Rep. Herrell asked why the 10-year strategy included no references to how it will be implemented. Ms. Hall-Rivera said that it was a timing issue, in that the strategy was being prepared while the legislation was being considered.
Staffing for the additional fuel management workload
Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona asked in regards to the additional funding and new initiatives outlined in the Infrastructure legislation, “Does the Forest Service have adequate staff capacity to fill the new dollars they will be responsible with implementing, and how does the Forest Service intend to address staffing capacities with new hiring?”
After Ms. Hall-Rivera and Brian Ferebee, Chief Executive of Intergovernmental Relations for the Forest Service, glanced at each other, Mr. Ferebee turned on his microphone and basically said they were looking at the issue.
My take:
I did not summarize every topic that came up in the hearing, but attempted to capture the most significant ones related to wildland fire. After reading through the above, I noticed a trend: PLANNING, and a lack thereof.
Failure to meet the deadlines required for the establishing the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission.
Planning to rely on only 5 years of funding to execute a 10-year plan for fuel management.
The 10-year strategy included no references to how it will be implemented. “The strategy was being prepared while the legislation was being considered.”
The Forest Service does not know if they have enough staffing to accomplish the new initiatives outlined in the Infrastructure legislation.
It reminds me of the effort by Congress to transfer seven C-130 aircraft to the Forest Service to be converted to air tankers.
On December 27, 2013, President Obama signed the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act which directed the Coast Guard to transfer seven HC-130H aircraft to the U.S. Forest Service. The legislation also supplied $130 million for the Air Force to perform needed maintenance on the aircraft and to convert them into air tankers.
About 522 days later, on June 1, 2015 the FS distributed internally a “Briefing Paper” that revealed the agency was not prepared to manage a long term safety oversight program for this government owned/contractor operated venture (GO/CO). On that date the the FS had no detailed operating plan and had not hired or appointed any long-term, full-time safety personnel. The document also stated that “the military model for a squadron of seven HC-130H aircraft is to have TWO [sic] full time safety officers assigned.”
“The time frame to create one or more new positions to provide aviation safety oversight duties”, the Briefing Paper said, “would likely be lengthy and not meet Agency HC-130H requirements in time for the 2015 fire season.”
The FS did not use the 522 days to plan for the absorption of the aircraft into the fleet.
They came to a conclusion, according to the Briefing Paper:
This is a new program for the Forest Service, one that we have never managed before (We don’t know what we don’t know).
Eventually, more than four years after the transfer and tens of millions had likely been spent on the refurbishment of the seven aircraft, the Forest Service decided they did not want the air tankers. Congress passed additional legislation to give the seven HC-130Hs to the state of California instead.
Fire on the Sawtooth National Forest in Idaho. Photo by Harrison Raine.
A bill sitting on the Governor’s desk would pay state firefighters in Idaho hazard pay when they are battling wildfires. It would add an additional 25 percent of their hourly wage to their earnings when they are assigned to a fire.
The starting pay for fire personnel with the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) is $12.55 an hour, lower than what they could receive working at some fast food restaurants.
The legislation passed the House with a vote of 49 to 19, but was went through the senate 35-0.
From KREM2:
“What this does is it recognizes that wildland firefighting is a very dangerous profession,” said the Fire Management Chief for the IDL in Coeur d’Alene, Josh Harvey. “There’s all sorts of things in that wildland fire environment that can kill an individual or seriously injure them.” Harvey, a born and raised Idahoan, has been a wildland firefighter since graduating high school. He has spent much time working shoulder to shoulder with interagency partners. He’s also been in charge of other federal or state firefighters who, while doing the same job, were compensated at a higher rate because they received hazard pay. For the agency, Harvey said offering hazard pay is critical to retain some of the employees who get lured away by other agencies offering a higher rate of pay.
The firefighters have a work schedule of 40 hours per week, but are expected to work as long as necessary while at a fire, and can travel to other states on two-week assignments.
In a recent survey, 60% of IDL’s wildland firefighters who indicated they would not return to work for the agency next season said that if hazard pay was provided, they would stay on with IDL.
The bill specifies that firefighters would only be eligible for hazard pay for the time they are actually on that incident, which may be only an hour or two for a small fire. This differs from the federal policy, where personnel are paid hazard pay for the entire shift.
