There’s been a growing strain on the wildland firefighting workforce as fires become larger and more involved.
CALIFORNIA, USA — Peak wildfire season in California is a few months away, and the wet weather could create more fuel to burn when that time comes.
Despite rain and snow still in the forecast, firefighters are preparing now for wildfire season, and new changes are coming to the firefighting workforce.
With fires growing in size and duration and the needs and costs for staffing, the U.S. Forest Service is pivoting to a new business model it says will offer more flexibility when responding to wildfires.
“In order to keep that workforce going and to continue to feed the system of leadership throughout the workforce, we’re constantly bringing in new folks,” said Alex Robertson with the U.S. Forest Service.
There’s been a growing strain on the wildland firefighting workforce as fires become larger and more involved. In past years, a shortage of top-level type 1 teams has resulted in type 2 teams taking on bigger assignments.
“It’s a largely seasonal workforce. Well, that in a lot of ways is changing as we have started to develop and started to evolve our organization,” said Robertson.
This season, 44 incident management teams will respond to fires across the country based on their training levels.
“Once they come in, they start receiving a lot of training, a lot of development,” said Robertson.
Meanwhile in California, the state had two very wet winters in a row, and water levels are looking good. But other parts of the country are already dealing with dangerously dry conditions.
“We know the Great Lakes area is drier than normal, ahead of schedule. And then certain parts of the country are sitting with a significant snowpack and then in other parts of the country are sitting with less than normal,” said Robertson.
For perspective, just in the first three months of the year, more than 2,500 square miles were burned. That’s more than half of last year’s total.
“We just saw over a million acres here in Texas. You know, those fires started in February. There’s a good chance that this year, in November and even December, it’s quite possible we’ll be deploying folks to big fires in Southern California. That’s like a full year of fire,” said Jeff Rupert, director of the Office of Wildland Fire.
Forecasters are predicting elevated fire potential over the coming months in the Great Lakes region, parts of the Midwest and Southwest and even in Hawaii.
