Burnt Out: Rethinking U.S. Wildfire Fighting Strategy

Wildfire in the United States is reaching a crisis point. As global climate change continues, every fire season is becoming longer and drier. However, despite the growing risk, the United States still relies on old methods of firefighting and inefficient organizations to coordinate responses. To prepare for a fire-filled future, the United States must create a new National Fire Service.

Fires across the country cause severe damage to life and property throughout the American West. Every year, California, Arizona, and many other states find themselves battling widespread fires that destroy homes and uproot families. Wildfires in Colorado and Canada have caused air quality warnings in cities hundreds of miles away, making it dangerous for people to go outside. It will continue to get worse. Studies from the Environmental Protection Agency show that wildfires are not only becoming more common but also burn more acreage every year, causing vastly more damage. The recent 2020 fire season in California alone burned over 4.3 million acres, reaching levels of destruction not seen since the 1800s. During that season, fire killed 33 people and resulted in more than $19 billion in economic loss. Decreased air quality caused between 1,200 and 3,000 excess deaths. Thus, it is not underselling to say that wildfires are a massive security risk to our country.

Despite the threat, the U.S. response to wildland fires can best be described as ad hoc. Currently, fire management comes from many agencies, each responsible for different geographic areas and budgets. The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), the closest thing the United States has to a central authority on fire management, includes nine agencies: the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Fire Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Association of State Foresters, the National Weather Service, and the National Park Service. Per NIFC’s website: “NIFC is a place, not a distinct organization,” firefighting agencies use the center as a place to cooperate, with no binding federal command from which to direct resources. Essentially, NIFC enables coordination but cannot order anyone to do anything. Because most of the NIFC partners must balance their limited budgets across several distinct lines of effort, no agency is purely focused on the direct management of wildfires at the federal level.

The limitations of NIFC are evident when dealing with increasingly common and complex fires. During the August 2020 fire season in California, hundreds of small fires started by lightning storms converged into a mega-fire that burned more than one million acres. State and local authorities were quickly overwhelmed. The California state firefighting organization, Cal Fire, ran out of manpower. Even with the deployment of thousands of firefighters and the release of federal aid, it took the National Forest Service approximately three months to contain the fire. NIFC, despite their best efforts, simply did not have the resources and personnel to manage the unprecedented disaster.

The system as it currently stands is being pushed to its breaking point. Year after year, state and local firefighters must seek help from outside sources. For some states, that has meant employing thousands of prisoners to do backbreaking and hazardous labor for less than $2 an hour. The Department of Defense also deploys active duty military personnel to assist in times of fire emergency, activating entire battalions to go and augment firefighters already on the ground. These methods raise questions of efficiency: why are we sending untrained people to fight fires, and is it in our best interest to take soldiers away from military training to do it? The use of prisoners also carries ethical considerations. While they are technically volunteers, their degree of choice in the matter is debatable, and work for such little pay has led critics to reasonably call this a practice of slave labor.

More professional wildland firefighters would provide an acceptable answer to both issues. However, federal firefighters currently face severe retention and recruitment issues. Low pay, few benefits, unpredictable schedules, and hazardous and strenuous work mean that many federally employed firefighters have very little incentive to stay. Federal firefighters, many of whom are employed seasonally, are paid wages as low as $16.25 per hour. Many are tempted away by the prospect of working for state agencies like Cal Fire, which offer significantly better pay and benefits, leaving federal responses to developing emergencies grossly understaffed.

The United States must rethink the way it approaches wildland firefighting. Instead of a reactive ad hoc force, the country needs a proactive approach dedicated to fire prevention and response. First and foremost, there needs to be a comprehensive federal agency responsible for national wildfire management. Currently, with so many agencies concerned with firefighting in different areas of responsibility, coordinated responses to wildfires can take time to organize. When fighting fires, time is in short supply.

Instead of NIFC, policymakers should consolidate the firefighting resources of each NIFC member organization under a new National Fire Service within the Department of the Interior. In doing so, the federal government can more effectively direct resources to emerging crises, stopping them before they grow out of control. Right now, no federal agency is focused solely on forest fire management and prevention. Even the National Fire Administration, despite the name, is a small organization concerned with public fire awareness and training. A new National Fire Service focused on fire management would allow larger organizations like the National Forest Service and the National Park Service to better address the other parts of their mandate, leaving crisis management to a purpose-built organization. By doing so, the United States can leave NIFC behind, consolidating nine disparate and unfocused agencies into one.

Second, policymakers must invest heavily in wildland firefighting, treating it as the vital security concern that it is. Primarily, this means further professionalizing federal firefighters. Rather than rely on seasonal workers, prisoners, and soldiers, there must be a highly trained, equipped, and (most importantly) well-compensated federal firefighting service. By professionalizing the force, the United States can better manage the training and recruitment of new firefighters, offering competitive wages and attracting talented people to where they are most needed. Retaining full-time firefighters year-round gives flexibility to firefighting responses and allows for more preventive measures to be taken in colder months, including more opportunities for training outside of emergency conditions. In the United States, we pride ourselves on the strength and professionalism of our armed forces. Why not be proud of the same among emergency workers?

Finally, this proposed National Fire Service must not view wildfires as a seasonal problem. As a country, the United States must begin looking at wildfires as a constant concern, to be attacked proactively. Prevention measures, such as controlled burns to remove combustible fuel from vulnerable forests, are critical to ensure that fires are stopped before they start. Along with active measures, heavy investment is needed in fire monitoring. Advances in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have revolutionized the way first responders track and respond to fires, but it is still not enough. Policymakers must devote more resources to these sorts of preventive technologies that, while expensive, prevent damage and deaths. If the United States can spend billions of dollars on unmanned systems that target terrorists abroad, we should have no qualms with spending the same levels of money on the same systems that preserve life at home. In a world without climate change, the United States could get away with an ad hoc system of fire management. Unfortunately, the realities of a changing world necessitate a new way of approaching a growing fire threat. While creating a new fire-focused government agency would not solve the problem of forest fires, it would be a valuable step toward better crisis management.

Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: U.S. Fire Administration