Burned-out firefighters are fleeing the US Forest Service amid labor disputes: ‘We are decimated’

Firefighters are feeling the strain of another long and intense season, with months to go before the highest risks subside. But as they battle the flames, the thousands of people working for the US Forest Service (USFS), the largest federal employer of firefighters, are also fighting for changes within the agency to tackle issues they say have made the work even harder.

Federal firefighters have been waiting for years for revisions to outdated job descriptions, which have forced them to do more for less. Many have opted to leave altogether.

In a scathing letter sent last month to top officials at the USFS and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the union that represents federal wildland firefighters, accused the agency of decades of wage theft and job misclassification.

The issue is among many – from a stalled pay raise to short staffing and escalating job hazards – that have contributed to severe burnout and struggles with recruitment and retention, just as fires become more difficult – and more dangerous – to fight.

“We have fewer people willing to stick it out and get to the positions that pay them for the work they are already doing,” said Morgan Thomsen, a firefighter with the USFS for the last two decades who was speaking from his position as a union steward. The exodus has not only created gaps in experience, tactical planning and coverage, but has also exacerbated the exhaustion felt by firefighters still in the trenches. “Those of us who have stuck around keep getting more and more stuff piled on because everybody else is leaving.”

The 2021 infrastructure act required the USFS and other land management agencies to issue updates to what’s known as an “occupational series”, a set of guidelines that outlines the expertise, credentials and duties that federal employees need to perform at each level.

Many of the position descriptions in the current series are outdated, including some sketched in the mid-20th century before complex firefighting needs arose.

But after nearly three years of work, the NFFE said in its August letter, the new descriptions for firefighting roles laid out by the USFS were essentially “copied and pasted” with minor changes.

A major point of contention has been the designation of emergency medical technician (EMT) and emergency medical services (EMS) work. The union has called for positions that better reflect the emergency-response training and qualifications firefighters often need to perform their duties, and better access to the pay raises that go with them. .

The misclassification of someone’s job can have a cumulative affect on their life, affecting their salary, overtime pay, retirement and abilities to advance. A marked stagnation in career development and opportunities has pushed more experienced and management-level firefighters out the door.

The USFS has lost nearly half of its permanent employees in the last three years, according to data reported on by ProPublica. New recruits tend to be entry-level and inexperienced, leaving the agency scrambling to fill leadership positions during the most active parts of the year.

Even though the USFS says it exceeded its hiring goals this year, thousands of key roles went unfilled as large wildfires began to rage this summer. The impact is severe, leaving firefighters, communities and landscapes at risk. “You don’t have enough people overseeing things,” Thomsen said. “The ripple effect is a huge safety concern.”

‘There’s no stop to it’

More than 7m acres (2.8m hectares) have burned across the US this year – a total 26% higher than the 10-year average – and the season shows no sign of slowing. The National Interagency Fire Center, a federal firefighting coordination agency, has set firefighting activity across the US at its highest level for most of the summer, an indication that national resources are fully committed.

“There really is no stop to it,” said Abel Martinez, a fire captain at Angeles national forest in southern California.

Martinez is experiencing the strain first-hand. Many firefighters have accumulated more than a thousand hours of overtime this year, with months of work still to go. Even the colder seasons, which used to be reserved for rest and recuperation, are filled with controlled burns – essential projects that nonetheless add to the exhaustion.

According to Martinez, overwork has led to an increase in accidents and injuries. And, there’s a direct line, he said, between these issues and the lag on pay and promotions. “We are decimated with the retention so a lot of the positions aren’t filled,” he said. “Because they are not filled, other people pick up the slack.”

Dozens of middle-management workers have left Angeles national forest since last December, Martinez said, including 11 captains and four engine operators, and their experience is difficult to make up for. The forest service is beginning to encourage better work-life balance to stave off burnout, but Martinez said it was a challenge to take time off with staffing so sparse.

“You are on a constant cycle of physical and mental fatigue,” he said, adding that even if the culture changes, conditions keep getting worse. “I don’t think the agency has a good plan for burnout.”

The issues have caused some to question whether the USFS is equipped to oversee the federal government’s largest firefighting force into the future. The agency was originally created in 1905 to manage land – to oversee timber harvest and recreation within the nation’s forests – but has watched its mission and budget be consumed by the need to fight fires that have grown more frequent and severe.

Roughly a third of its sprawling workforce is now made up of firefighters. Some have voiced concerns that their positions are being kept arbitrarily beneath those of land managers, who have traditionally been at the top of the agency’s hierarchy. That’s left a disconnect between leadership and the crews battling the flames.

There was a reason, Martinez said, that the “Los Angeles county fire department isn’t run by by the county’s parks and recreation department”.

Like Thomsen, Martinez serves as a representative in the union, which is why he is able to speak more freely.

The USFS has acknowledged an urgent need to update the occupational series and has called on Congress for more funding. But the agency firmly disputed the union’s characterization of their work together.

“We engaged in an unprecedented level of collaboration with NFFE,”a USFS spokesperson, Wade Muehlhof, told the Guardian in an emailed response.

Highlighting that the agency had also worked closely with the US Office of Personnel Management on the series, Muehlhof said that the USFS agreed withthe NFFE on the need to include more accurate EMT duties in future position descriptions, but that it will take time. The USFS also responded that they rely on professional classifiers to ensure position descriptions align with the standards set by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and that no group of employees is given a preference over the others.

He added that the USFS remains committed to working with the union.

“A new and unique series for federal wildland firefighters is not something any federal agency has had for 50 years,” Muehlhof said. “Getting it in place successfully requires ongoing collaboration and adjustments as we move forward in implementation.”

Budget woes and rising costs

Adding to the stress over job descriptions is a protracted battle about firefighters’ pay that has dragged on for years. Federal wildland firefighters make far less than their state- and city-employed counterparts, with paychecks that rival those of fast-food employees.

A temporary pay raise issued through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which set minimums at $15 an hour and boosted salaries by the lower of either 50% or $20,000, has yet to be made permanent by Congress. There are hopes this could soon change, but sharply divided legislators are facing the looming 30 September deadline to pass the next federal budget.

Muehlhof emphasized that the USFS had been behind efforts to increase pay for federal wildland firefighters and requested more than $1.3bn as part of the 2025 federal budget to support pay raises and new hiring, and to improve firefighters’ housing. He also clarified that work on the series wasn’t related to the budget, rejecting concerns that promotions were stifled due to funding.

But the agency is under immense financial pressure as it grapples with both rising expenses and what the USFS chief, Randy Moore, recently described as a “budget-limited future”.

The costs of fighting fires are increasing as the climate crisis fuels more extreme conditions. A federal Climate Financial Risk report released in July of this year, which USFS researchers contributed to, found that lands in the national forest system could see double the area burned by mid-century – and that’s one of the more conservative estimates. One scenario showed risks quadrupling.

Suppression costs, which have averaged $2.9bn a year over the last decade, are expected to rise accordingly. By 2050, suppression expenditures are expected to jump to $3.9bn a year, a 42% increase, but could spike as high as 84%, according to the same report.

But the exodus of knowledge and skill will only increase if the issues aren’t solved quickly. Federal firefighters have long borne the brunt of financial strain, wreaking havoc on their physical and mental health, their personal lives, and their ability to do safe work in the harshest conditions.

“I could see more people leaving because of this,” Thomsen said, referring to delays in new job descriptions. Even if Congress is able to pass an appropriations bill that secures pay raises for firefighters, progress will be slow without an adequate job series. “It is a step in the right direction,” he said, “but it would be like putting a Band-Aid on a cut throat at this point.”