Skip to content

Tag: recruitment

  1. Home
  2. Tag Archives: recruitment

British Columbia starts season with most applicants in a decade

More than 2,000 applicants wanted to be a part of the British Columbia Wildfire Service in 2024, the highest number of applicants the service has seen in the past decade. The agency told WildfireToday that the application boost was linked to feedback received from the Expert Task Force on Emergencies established last October by BC Premier David Eby after the province’s historic 2023 wildfire season. The task force issued 31 recommendations, some of which were enacted swiftly ahead of the 2024 wildfire season.

Fire management made numerous enhancements to the Service’s wildland firefighter recruitment and hiring process as a result of the recommendations. Upgrades included expanding First Nations boot camps, extending the hiring period for new recruits, and encouraging applicants to indicate their work location preference.

The Service directly attributed the improvements to their having a full staff of 162 Initial Attack Crews and 30 Unit Crews in 2024, compared with the 149 Initial Attack Crews and 30 Unit Crews in 2023. Approximately 1,300  fire crew positions are employed directly with the Service, including an additional 500 permanent staff and 300 seasonal positions; 250 new recruits were invited by the Service from its New Recruit Boot Camps and First Nations Boot Camps this spring. The provincial 2024 budget provided $38 million to support stable, year-round staffing, including fire crew leaders and frontline staff who work in structure protection, prevention, risk reduction, and wildfire land-based recovery.

“People living in First Nations, along with rural and remote communities bear a disproportionate impact from the rising threat of wildfires,” said Wayne Schnitzler, task force member and executive director of First Nations’ Emergency Services Society. “I’m pleased to see the Province is boosting recruitment initiatives, including expanding First Nations boot camps as recommended by the Premier’s expert task force on emergencies. These initiatives break down barriers and pave the way for increased participation of Indigenous peoples as wildland firefighters.”

Apart from hiring, the Service said it will continue to implement numerous task force recommendations through 2024, including:

        • Launching a wildfire training and education center at Thompson Rivers University
        • Increasing new technology use to predict wildfire movement and growth
        • Increasing community evacuee support funding
        • Increasing the volunteer pool to support evacuees
        • Boosting wildland firefighting fleet and equipment
        • Enhancing wildfire recruitment tactics

BC Wildfire Service airtankers, meanwhile, are conducting practice flights from Kamloops and Penticton airports in the afternoons. The BCWS said airtankers out of Kamloops are flying the east side of Adams Lake, and  the Penticton aircraft will conduct practice about 40 nautical miles east of Penticton.

CastanetKamloops.net reported that BCWS noted the exact location and timing of tanker practices are subject to change depending on weather and other conditions; the practices don’t involve active fire. After six days with no flying activity, practices are run to make sure aviation teams are ready to respond. “It is important for air attack officers and pilots to practice, as it allows them to remain proficient and prepared to respond to active wildfires,” BCWS said. “Practices also ensure the aircraft are mechanically sound and ready to respond.”

Record-breaking fires, COVID-19, and impacts on firefighters

It’s been four years since a near-perfect storm hit the U.S. West. COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, just months before the worst wildfire season in recorded history.

The interactions between wildfire and COVID-19 were large and sweeping, research in the years since has shown. The 2020 season left lasting impacts on the wildland firefighting force, both systemically and personally.

Wildland firefighters are at high risk for both COVID-19 infection and, when infected, experiencing severe illness from the virus, research published in the National Library of Medicine and Science academic journals found. Researchers in one study examined potential health and workforce capacity impacts by modeling the movement of suppression resources across the country over a season and the corresponding potential for disease spread and cascading outbreaks across wildfire incidents.

inbound and outbound firefighters on a Montana fire

The increased risk stems primarily from firefighters’ exposure to wildfire smoke, limited access to hygiene supplies, and constantly being physically near other wildland firefighters and the public.

IHC superintendents were surveyed by USFS researchers a year after the fires burned. At the beginning of the pandemic, the agency launched a wide range of new practices for hotshot crews to limit the spread of COVID-19 while also, it was hoped, improving operational efficiency. New practices included changes in pre-fire preparation, using virtual paperwork and briefings, and reformatting traditional fire camps to a more widespread layout. The USFS also created a COVID-19 Incident Risk Assessment Tool for fire managers; it measured numerous factors including camp size, mitigation techniques, and number of positive cases to estimate how at-risk each crew was.

The researchers wanted to know if superintendents were interested in maintaining any of those practices in daily hotshot crew use in the years after 2020, regardless of COVID-19. The survey found that the majority of practices contributed positively to operational efficiency in addition to crewmember safety and well-being. Most respondents preferred the ease of virtual vs. in-person paperwork and briefings, they liked having crews spike on or near the line with the full-scale ICP camp away from the fire, and they felt better physically and mentally as a result of these changes.

Wildland firefighter well-being — and proper pay — are still a major focus for the USFS post-2020 as retention becomes an increasingly worrying issue. Research conducted this year on retention found that highly skilled wildland firefighters with a high number of assigned days, payment of additional annual earnings, and gained experience throughout the firefighter’s career all had positive effects on retention. Local wages of alternative occupations in a firefighter’s local area had no significant effect on retention.

The future of wildland firefighter physical health may also see improvements thanks to technological developments stemming from COVID-19. Respiratory illnesses like coronavirus, and other long-term health risks firefighters face such as lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, may be seen in firefighters less and less as mobile respirators proceed further in development.

California fitted wildland firefighters with a mobile respirator prototype last October while they dug firelines or cut down trees with chainsaws. The results were mixed.

“Plenty broke. Hoses popped out of sockets. Straps snapped. Masks slid down sweating faces. Filters became dislodged,” Julie Johnson wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle.

During this event, firefighters from Cal Fire, L.A. County and the USFS took turns trying out several types of mask. They hiked down a slope and then back up, then pulled off their masks, sweating and breathing hard in triple-digit temps. Each round took only about ten minutes.

Firefighters shared their impressions with observers: Felt like a muzzle. Was too bulky. Too tight. It slipped off my face once I began to sweat.

Hearing one of her colleagues say “it’s better than nothing,” Cal Fire’s Sol Espinoza spoke up. “I’d rather take nothing,” she said.

The test is one of many completed or planned throughout the country as the fire agencies look to lower firefighter mortality from diseases increasingly found to be worsened through wildfire smoke inhalation. Experts have hedged their bets on technology frequently used to keep COVID-19 patients hospitalized with severe cases alive. Adaptations in the technology are still under development as researchers figure out which version might be best suited to meet the dynamic needs of firefighters in the field.

Espinoza, a firefighter with Cal Fire in San Bernardino. Espinoza said she could never imagine wearing a constrictive device that makes it harder to breathe.

“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

SIGN UP HERE

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. 

Hotshots working under an ‘unsustainable system’

The first-ever review of the interagency hotshot crew program found that hotshots have been working under an “unsustainable system” and recommended 50 changes to improve current labor conditions.

The review, requested by the National Interagency Hotshot Crew Steering Committee, began on July 16, 2021, and the report was finalized in August.

Geronimo Hotshots
Geronimo Hotshots on the Big Windy Complex, Oregon, 2013.                                  USFS photo by Lance Cheung.

“The hotshot program is at a crossroads. In a time where more wildland firefighting capacity is needed, applicant lists for hotshot crews are less robust and the workforce is diminishing,” the report says. “If these challenges are not addressed in a timely manner, the current unsustainable system may leave crews unable to provide the leadership, expertise, and capabilities required in today’s wildland fire environment.”

The report summed up its recommendations in 12 points, which included:

    • Develop a specific wildland firefighter job series and increase pay
    • Provide a $40,000 minimum annual supply budget to each crew
    • Require a three-day rest and recuperation period
    • Allow crewmembers to attend personal events
    • Modify the hiring process
    • Start an outreach program to increase recruitment
    • Create a 30-day process to fill key vacancies
    • Update and clarify the Standards for Interagency Hotshot Crew Operations (SIHCO) so they are no longer misinterpreted by host units
    • Create an annual charter and program of work for the hotshot crew program to further limit gaps between leadership and the field
    • Update the repair and procurement processes for hotshot vehicles
    • Develop a minimum facility standard for hotshot crew facilities
    • Add housing, modify housing costs and create a consistent housing policy

The review addressed potential challenges to meeting the recommended changes, including lack of investment, systemic pushback, and cultural norms. Hotshot crew superintendents also said they’d prefer freedom and flexibility to make decisions for their own crews.

Without the recommended changes, the committee said agencies may not be able to sustain the current number of crews.

“It is important to acknowledge that while the fundamental reasons hotshot crews exist have not changed, the environment they operate in has,” the report said. “Unprecedented environmental challenges and increased social and political expectations contribute to IHCs finding themselves in high demand and short supply.”

The committee said similar reviews should be conducted by other program managers before the recommendations are broadly applied.