Federal firefighters will quit in droves if Congress doesn’t take action, union warns

A wildland firefighter manages a backfire — a fire intentionally set to burn off vegetation — during the Mosquito fire in Placer County in September 2022. “If we lose our wildland firefighters, we’re going to lose our natural resources, we’re going to lose cities and towns and we’re going to lose lives,” Alonzo said. “It’s a crisis we need to address and warrants immediate action by the Congress.” “While I don’t want to comment directly to the legislation or speculate as to what the holdup is — we know avoiding this pay cliff is imperative for retaining and recruiting the federal wildland firefighting workforce,” Shayne L. Martin, assistant director of media relations for the Forest Service, said in a statement. “Living out of your truck on government compounds while you’re fighting fire is not an uncommon thing,” said Ben Strahan, superintendent of the El Dorado Hotshots, an elite team of highly trained Forest Service firefighters based in Northern California. I can’t lie to my folks that work under me anymore and tell them things are going to get better because I don’t know if that’s true or not.” The departure of federal firefighters would also compromise the government’s ability to implement sorely needed fuels treatments, such as forest thinning and prescribed burning projects.