San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
U.S. seeks to boost recruiting of firefighters
BOISE, Idaho — U.S. wildfire managers are considering shifting from seasonal to fulltime firefighting crews to deal with what has become a yearround wildfire season and making the jobs more attractive by increasing pay and benefits.
There’s a push in Congress to increase firefighter pay and convert at least 1,000 seasonal wildland firefighters to permanent, fulltime, yearround workers. U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Christopher French, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources last week, agreed firefighters are underpaid.
The yearround firefighters could also work removing brush and other hazardous fuels when not battling wildfires. French said the Forest Service treats 3 million acres annually, but to make progress would need to treat two to four times that much in the 193 million acres it manages.
“Without a paradigm shift in the way we treat hazardous fuels on federal and nonfederal land, and addressing the impacts of climate change, we will remain in this current wildfire crisis and destruction from wildfires will continue to threaten communities across the West,” he said while testifying about West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s Energy Infrastructure Act.
The problem has become more challenging in recent decades as more homes are built where urban and wildland areas meet, forcing firefighters to protect structures.
President Biden recently called for an increase in firefighter pay from $13 an hour. “That’s a ridiculously low salary to pay federal firefighters,” he said.
Firefighters can often boost pay by working overtime, a regular occurrence during bad fire years.
Increased pay for firefighters was included in infrastructure legislation sponsored by Manchin, the Democratic chair of the energy and natural resources committee and a key swing vote in the evenly divided Senate. Manchin was among a bipartisan group of 10 lawmakers who announced a deal Thursday with Biden on a pareddown version of the administration’s plan. Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, also in the group, said the package would contain money for “wildfire resilience” programs but was unclear on whether raises for firefighters were included.
Still, officials at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise said they face a potential shortage of firefighters this year because the $13 starting wage isn’t enough.
She also said the length of time firefighters spend in the field has been increasing each year. That can be a problem as many seasonal firefighters are college students who need to get back to class.
“In the past we had fire seasons; now we have fire years,” she said.
Officials at the center on Tuesday raised the national preparedness level to 4 on a 1to5 scale, the second earliest dating back to 1990. The primary reason is that much of the West is immersed in a drought that will probably make putting out fires more challenging and strain firefighting resources throughout the West.
The recordsetting blazes that raged in Oregon, California, Washington and other states in 2020 revealed how stretched thin the ranks of firefighters have become. By September there were so many fires burning across the West that hundreds of requests for help went unfulfilled as agencies scrambled to get enough firefighters, aircraft, engines and support personnel.