Federal Job Cuts Are Making Wildfires Harder to Fight

At the start of what is becoming an intense wildfire season this year, federal officials warned of a 15 percent decrease in available “hotshot” teams, the elite squads that fight complex blazes in the most rugged areas.

In Washington State, officials had to call in the National Guard and 250 active-duty U.S. Army soldiers to help extinguish embers because they didn’t have enough firefighters.

And as fire raged in central Utah this month, one team called for help but waited for days. By the time more hands arrived last week, two firefighters working under contract with the U.S. Forest Service had been killed in a helicopter crash and the flames had spread significantly.

“Nobody has all they need,” said Joe Stutler, a veteran fire incident commander who recently retired as the Deschutes County forester in Oregon and spent 35 years in the Forest Service. “This is an extraordinary year.”

The nation’s wildfire-fighting corps is a mix of state, local and federal workers and private crews-for-hire who work together. As more than 100 wildfires burn in 15 states, state resources are strained. At the same time, the federal government has cut jobs at the U.S. Forest Service and is consolidating its firefighting capabilities. The result is confusion, supply problems and slower responses, according to former Forest Service officials and the union representing the agency’s workers.

“We just don’t have enough people in the system, not for this kind of fire season,” said Mike Dudley, who retired in 2018 as a Forest Service regional director. “We’re paying the price for it right now.”

A combination of larger and more numerous fires and the Trump administration’s changes has made it harder for officials to deploy and manage firefighters effectively this year, veteran firefighters and union officials said. Climate change-fueled drought has primed Western landscapes for fast-spreading flames: Warming temperatures allow the air to suck moisture from the landscape more quickly, increasing the dry fuel available for fires.

The administration has cut more than than 5,800 jobs from the Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of public lands, including 154 national forests, and employs thousands of firefighters. Officials didn’t let firefighters opt into voluntary early resignation programs, but they pushed out many of the workers who handle firefighting logistics and coordination.

There are fewer teams able to handle the largest and fastest-spreading fires this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates state and federal wildfire response. There are 38 teams, down from 44 two years ago, but only about 25 such teams have been ***igned to fires at a time this month. The rest are taking required weeklong breaks to prevent burnout. Some teams have seen deployments extended from the usual two weeks to include a third because the need is so great.

The administration is also seeking to combine firefighters from the Forest Service with those from several other agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to form a new agency, the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.

The Forest Service chief, Tom Schultz, has said the changes have not reduced the nation’s capacity to combat wildfires. He told Congress in July that the agency had hired quickly ahead of fire season and had surp***ed its recruiting goals by lining up 11,800 firefighters this summer, slightly more than under previous administrations.

Meredith Hollowell, a Forest Service spokeswoman, said that hiring meant the agency’s current corps of firefighters was larger than at this point in any of the past five years and that the Forest Service was “fully staffed at the level we are funded for.”

While Ms. Hollowell said Forest Service leaders “continue to explore ways to strengthen critical middle leadership positions across the organization,” she said vacant roles “do not represent positions we are funded to fill today.”

“Staffing of U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighters remains strong,” she said.

But on a Forest Service website detailing its work force, agency officials also acknowledged that current firefighting staff could not “meet the needs of the continuing wildfire crisis.”

When fires forced more than 65,000 people from homes around Spokane, Wash., this month, the authorities turned to the National Guard and to active-duty soldiers from a military base south of Seattle for extra help. Because of federal job cuts, there are fewer experienced leaders in the larger wildfire-fighting system, which has limited how many firefighting teams can be deployed around the country, said George Geissler, the state forester.

“You don’t order them because you don’t have anyone that can manage them,” Mr. Geissler said. “We’re running very tight and resources are very thin.”

In southern Utah, the Widemouth 2 fire was spreading rapidly this month, prompting calls for help. By Aug. 5, more than a week after lightning sparked the blaze, only 500 firefighters were deployed, even as the flames threatened towns.

“We have orders out, but there are so many large fires nationwide,” Deanna Younger, a spokeswoman for the Great Basin Team 2, the firefighting team battling the blaze, said that afternoon. “There’s just such a demand right now.”

By the time another 100 firefighters arrived, including the two firefighters killed in the helicopter crash, the blaze had surp***ed 100,000 acres. As of Thursday, 861 firefighters were battling the fire, which had burned across nearly 130,000 acres and was 50 percent contained.

Fewer staffers are available to keep firefighters housed and fed, too. When evacuation orders forced local restaurants to close near the Bench fire in Oregon last month, firefighters were left with only packaged military meals, said Jean Nelson-Dean, a spokeswoman for the Northwest Coordination Center, an organization that manages regional fire response.

Critics of the administration’s approach say so much change has reduced fire readiness, at least in the short term. Fewer acres of forest are being treated for fire prevention. Fewer experienced firefighting teams are available to attack runaway blazes.

Among the people forced out of the Forest Service were staff members who help run command centers and base camps and others who aren’t full-time firefighters but have been trained so they can step in when fire activity is highest, said Steve Gutierrez, a representative of the National Federation of Federal Employees.

The loss of veteran employees means those who remain must juggle more tasks, said Scott Fitzwilliams, who was the supervisor of White River National Forest in Colorado until he retired from the Forest Service last year.

“We’re creating scenarios that are not safe,” Mr. Fitzwilliams said.

About 30,000 people from a patchwork of federal and state agencies, local departments and private teams have been ***igned to large wildfires across the country each day this month, according to the National Interagency Fire Center — about the maximum possible without drawing too many firefighters from their home bases, where they must remain on alert for new blazes in their own backyards, veterans said.

The Forest Service’s firefighters and other federal staff members are the largest single group. Firefighters work together across agencies and departments, often regardless of whether a blaze is on federal, state or private land.

The whole system has come under increasing stress as fire conditions become more challenging, frequent and long-lasting.

That has worn on wildfire-fighting crews, most of whose members have full-time jobs but volunteer to serve on teams that pull firefighters and support staff from across the country to respond to large fires. That once meant perhaps a few weeks away from home each year, but now can require grueling stints that stretch across months.

“People don’t see any end in sight, and they can’t get the resources they need,” Mr. Dudley said.