The U.S. isn’t prepared for fires fueled by climate change

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Fri, 2021-07-02 20:04 — mike kraft

Underpaid firefighters, overstretched budgets: The U.S. isn’t prepared for fires fueled by climate change Fire experts say the escalation of wildfires, fueled by climate change, demands an equally dramatic transformation in the nation’s response. Sarah Kaplan Washington Post

PORTLAND, Ore. — On the heels of one of the worst wildfire years on record, the federal government is struggling to recruit and retain staff as firefighters grapple with low wages, trauma and burnout from increasingly long and intense fire seasons.

Heat waves have toppled temperature records across the nation, and firefighters are actively battling 48 large blazes that have consumed more than half a million acres in 12 states. But land management agencies are carrying out fire mitigation measures at a fraction of the pace required, and the funds needed to make communities more resilient are one-seventh of what the government has supplied.

“We’re burning up, we’re choking up, we aren’t just heating up,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) told President Biden at a meeting with Cabinet officials and Western governors Wednesday. “Across the board we have to disabuse ourselves of the old timelines and the old frames of engagement. … We can’t just double down.”

Yet fire experts say the escalation of wildfires, fueled by climate change, demands an equally dramatic transformation in the nation’s response — from revamping the federal firefighting workforce to the management of public lands to the siting and construction of homes.

“As our seasons are getting worse and worse … it feels like we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Kelly Martin, a wildfire veteran and president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. “We need a new approach.” ...

The U.S. government is the nation’s biggest employer of what are known as “wildland” firefighters. Most are temporary workers, their salaries as low as $13.45 per hour for a starting forestry technician. They spend summers traveling the country, working 16-hour days, 12 days at a time, often relying on overtime and hazard pay to make ends meet.

For decades, they’ve relied on a months-long offseason to rest and recover.

But now there is no offseason; one fire year simply bleeds into the next, as winter rain and snow is delayed and diminished by climate change. About 100 families had to be evacuated from the Santa Cruz mountains in January — usually California’s wettest month — when winds re-ignited the embers of a fire that started last August. ...

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