Why are we making a tough job harder?

Wildfires in Arizona have charred an area roughly 60 percent the size of Phoenix. Roughly 3,700 federal, state and local firefighters are working to protect our towns and forests, according to The Republic’s April Morganroth and Kelsey Mo.

We should be thankful for these brave souls who’ve dropped everything to save our hides. Instead, this is the thanks they’re getting:

Aerial crews have been grounded — not once, but twice — because some yahoos thought it was a good idea to fly their drones around the Goodwin Fire that threatened several towns near Prescott. One operator was arrested, at least.

But their apparent desire to get a sweet view of the flames put pilots and ground crews needlessly at risk. Work stopped, and understandably so. But the fire didn’t take a break. I shudder to calculate the acreage that was needlessly lost because of these drone operators’ selfishness.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, someone apparently fired shots at a U.S. Forest Service employee investigating the cause of a blaze east of Payson. The area was closed to search for the suspect, and now there are restrictions on where fire crews can go — which will impede their ability to fight the fire.

Arizona is already fighting a losing battle against wildfire. Decades of fire prevention allowed the forests to grow too thick. So, the blazes keep getting bigger and hotter and more dangerous, and fire crews are running themselves ragged trying to keep up.

There is talk every year about the unrealistic expectations we’ve set for firefighters. Some people are saying, you know, we can’t save every forest. Or every house. Or even every forest community. They have a point. I’m not saying that every house in a fire-prone area deserves to burn. But if we can’t behave ourselves enough to get out of the way and let firefighters do what already are dangerous jobs, we have to expect at some point that calls for help won’t be returned.

Allhands is The Republic’s digital opinions editor. Reach her at joanna .allhands@arizonarepublic.com.

ROB SCHUMACHER/THE REPUBLIC Aerial crews battling the Goodwin Fire near Prescott have been grounded twice in recent days as civilian drones entered nearby airspace.