To battle year-round blazes, US looks to add firefighters
BOISE, Idaho — U.S. wildfire managers are considering shifting to more full-time firefighting crews to deal with what has become a year-round 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 yearround workers, furthering a shift in their ranks over the past decade as fires have grown more severe.
It comes as fires raging in Western states parched by historic drought and record heat have burned more than 2,000 square miles this year.
That’s ahead of the pace in 2020, which ultimately saw a near-record 15,000 square miles burned as well as more than 17,000 homes and other structures destroyed.
U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Christopher French testified last week before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that firefighters need more pay in recognition of the growing workload.
“We have a crisis,” French said while testifying on a infrastructure bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. “We must address it at the scale of the problem, and bring long term relief to our firefighters, our communities and our forests.”
The challenge has increased in recent decades as more homes were built outside cities and towns, forcing wildland firefighters to protect the structures.
President Joe Biden last week called for an increase in firefighter pay from $13 an hour.
The Forest Service and Department of Interior combined employ about 15,000 firefighters. Roughly 70% are full-time and 30% are seasonal. Those figures used to be reversed, said Forest Service spokesman Stanton Florea.
Increased pay and more full-time firefighters were included in infrastructure legislation sponsored by Manchin, the chair of the energy and natural resources committee and a key swing vote in the evenly divided Senate. He was among a bipartisan group of 10 lawmakers who announced a deal Thursday with Biden on a pared-down version of the administration’s plan.
Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who was also in the group, said the package would contain money for addressing wildfires but was unclear whether raises were included. If not, Tester said raises would be addressed in next year’s federal budget.
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.
“There’s not technically a shortage of firefighters because we always overprepare,” said Jessica Gardetto, a fire center spokeswoman with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and a former wildland firefighter. “But it’s a concern. We’re seeing people taking jobs at local businesses that pay the same or more than starting fire positions.”