Firefighters in the United States say federal agencies are pushing exhausted crews into increasingly hazardous assignments as deep staffing shortages and a rapidly depleted suppression budget expose the limits of the country’s wildfire response.
Nine current firefighters, protected from identification under rules barring them from disclosing operational information, described a season marked by fatigue, riskier missions and insufficient leadership. Several retired firefighters said the same pattern had left teams operating close to a breaking point.
“Accidents have been through the roof,” one firefighter said, citing widespread exhaustion after near-continuous deployments since April. Another member of a specialised helicopter crew said he had declined assignments this year because they appeared too dangerous or poorly judged.
A dangerous capacity gap
The strain is measurable. Wildfires are overtaking crews at their highest rate in two decades, according to data from the federal Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center. By mid-August, there had been 12 entrapments, in which flames reach a pre-established safety zone or cut off an escape route, the highest total in 20 years, Reuters reported.
Fourteen on-duty deaths have been reported so far this year. Three firefighters died fighting Colorado’s Knowles fire, while another crew member later died from his injuries and a third was seriously burned. The Knowles incident became the deadliest entrapment in 13 years.
Dr Timothy Ingalsbee, a fire ecologist who began his career with the US Forest Service, said safety officers had reported a marked rise in burn injuries. He linked the increase to crews being directed into aggressive direct attacks when those tactics were not effective.
Ingalsbee is executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, known as Fusee, a nonprofit he co-founded to improve both worker protection and long-term fire management. He warned that operations were moving in the wrong direction on safety and ecological grounds.
“Climate change is half the explanation,” he said, describing the conditions as a “perfect firestorm for a really bad season for firefighting”.
The Department of the Interior and the US Forest Service did not respond to requests for comment or provide a comprehensive figure for injuries sustained this season.
Leadership shortages and budget pressure
In a letter issued the previous week to the heads of the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the US Forest Service, five senators said personnel had been kept on extended assignments while requests for crews went unanswered across western communities. They warned that the agencies’ combined $6bn suppression budget could be exhausted with several weeks remaining before the highest fire risks had passed.
Michael Bennet, Alex Padilla, Ron Wyden, Adam Schiff and John Hickenlooper signed the letter. It said “teams have worked more fires than is safe, using temporary supervisory structures because fully qualified personnel are not available”.
“This is exceptionally concerning given the high wildland firefighter fatality rate this season,” the senators added.
Large incidents depend on taskforce leaders, division supervisors and heavy-equipment managers to coordinate personnel, equipment and changing fire behaviour. Those roles typically require decades of experience, making vacancies difficult to fill quickly. When one person covers several responsibilities, decision-making becomes thinner just as the scale and speed of the fire increase.
“Firefighting capacity is kind of like wages, and the fire environment is like inflation – it has not kept up,” said one Pacific north-west fire captain.
Bobbie Scopa, a retired fire chief and vice-president of the firefighter advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, said shortages had persisted for about 20 years and worsened as demand expanded. Combining roles may look like an attempt to avoid bureaucracy, she said, but its purpose is survival.
“That sets everyone up for failure,” Scopa said. “It is not like we are trying to add bureaucracy – we are trying to keep people alive.”
The evidence offered by firefighters and senators contrasts sharply with assurances from US Forest Service chief Tom Schultz
