The West is burning, so California struggles to find help fighting its wildfires
A June memo from the U.S. Forest Service Chief stressed the policy and put it in the pandemic context, as a strategy to put fires out quickly to limit crews’ exposure to COVID-19 while in the field. That has meant crews are busy on almost every fire, even those that might be observed and allowed to burn. To Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the Oregon-based group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, it’s a misguided approach. “It’s not humanly possible to put out all fires,” he said. “We need to focus on the fires that really matter, to save lives and homes, and shift resources to them. The future is to safely manage wildfires, to steer them. You don’t need hundreds of firefighters to do that.”
They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?
“The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load. You won’t find any climate deniers on the fire line.”
COVID-19 Could Threaten Firefighters as Wildfire Season Ramps Up
Paul is one of thousands of firefighters from across the U.S. battling dozens of wildfires burning throughout the West. It’s an inherently dangerous job that now carries the additional risk of COVID-19 transmission. Any outbreak that ripples through a camp could easily sideline crews and spread the virus across multiple fires—and back to communities across the country—as personnel transfer in and out of “hot zones” and return home. Though most firefighters are young and fit, some will inevitably fall ill in these remote makeshift communities of shared showers and portable toilets, where medical care can be limited. The pollutants in the smoke they breathe daily also make them more susceptible to COVID-19 and can worsen the effects of the disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.