How federal layoffs and budget cuts are reshaping wildfire season on public lands
Cover photo courtesy of Washington DNR
By Bri Loveall
Think of a big fire. Pull it up in your mind. I can picture the Carlton Complex fire of 2014 in the Methow Valley, when the sun was a constant circle of fiery red, barely visible through the smoky sky, and the AQI (Air Quality Index) hovered in the 500s for weeks. My throat felt raw after only minutes outdoors. I kept Visine in my day bag to alleviate the constant grit I seemed to have in my eyes. The Carlton Complex fire burned a little over a quarter of a million acres in the course of its six-week burn, with almost 3,000 personnel working the fire. And, as you know, there have been many wildfires in the Inland Northwest since then.
As devastating as it is, wildfire isn’t an inherently bad thing. In fact, fires are an essential part of a healthy forest ecosystem, recycling nutrients back into the soil and clearing out dead or diseased vegetation so that other healthy plants may grow. But the effects of climate change, increased human-caused fires, and other complex dynamics mean that many present-day wildfires are larger, more destructive and difficult to manage.
Aside from some vague, Hollywood-esque images of firefighters running through a burning forest, I had no real knowledge about how wildland fires were fought. Nor did I understand the complex level of communication and collaboration that happened between multi-jurisdiction agencies, which are dependent upon a healthy working budget and adequate staffing. While budget cuts and seasonal employee layoffs are a routine fixture in any organizational setting, the recent financial decisions of the Trump administration have generated a lot of cause for concern for the coming fire season.
Monkey Wrenching with Wildland Firefighting and Public Safety
Initial hiring freezes ordered by the Trump administration in early 2025 sent shock waves of concern through many of the federal and state agencies we rely on to combat wildfires. While wildland firefighters were eventually deemed exempt due to their critical public safety duties, the federal workforce layoffs that followed led some federally funded public land agency employees to take to the internet with tweets, posts and videos lamenting layoffs of critical wildland firefighting support staff, a move they say will hinder wildfire preparedness and response.
When I spoke with Ryan Rodruck, Public Information Officer with the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR), he assured me that local teams of wildland firefighters would have no trouble managing the fires in their jurisdiction (smaller fires that begin on DNR land) this year.
Since the DNR is a state agency and adheres to a state budget, it is not affected by federal cuts. In the last three years, 90% of fires in the northeast Washington region have been contained to fewer than 10 acres. This is thanks in large part to the DNR’s aggressive fuel management efforts, forest health management, prescribed burns and other wildfire prevention programs. The concern, Rodruck told me, is in the larger, multi-jurisdiction fires that exceed 10 acres.
These larger fires are assigned to an incident management team (IMT), a group of people from various agencies: DNR, the Bureau of Land Management, USFS, local fire districts, and even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The people who serve within these organizations typically have day jobs that are unrelated to their roles in fighting wildfires, but they are crucial to the functioning of complex interagency wildfire response teams. With the projected layoffs and budget cuts that multiple public land agencies are experiencing, it’s unclear if the employees with dual roles will be there when they’re needed.
On the Job as a Wildland Firefighter
Andrew Stenbeck is a veteran DNR wildland firefighter. During the off season he works with the DNR managing state lands, which includes timber harvest, planting trees, fuel reductions, and firefighting training. During the fire season, Stenbeck is a part of a Type 3 team, one that specializes in responding quickly to local fires and taking over the fire management from local resources.
As Stenbeck described his 35 years as a wildland firefighter to me, I was surprised by the level of communication happening between multiple public land agencies. At the incident command post, or base camp, a slew of operations management teams (all staffed by members from different agencies) gather morning and night to create an Incident Action Plan, a detailed list that discusses safety, logistics, finances, and media plans. An incredible amount of planning happens before a firefighter ever steps foot onto the fire line, with multiple agencies working together to create a cohesive plan to safely contain a wildfire.
At an incident command post (ICP) camp, firefighting personnel spend 14 days at a time (but sometimes up to 21 without reprieve), sleeping on cots, in tents, or on the ground as they work nonstop to fight fire. ICPs are usually located a safe yet practical distance from the wildland fire, though Stenbeck says he has been stationed as many as 45 minutes away. “It isn’t ideal,” Stenbeck tells me.
Rodruck agrees, explaining that driving is the second most dangerous thing firefighters will do during fire season as they move back and forth from base camp to the fire line. Increases in wildlife movement, narrow (and often) gravel roads, as well as general fatigue on behalf of the drivers puts personnel at increased risk for accidents.
When I ask Stenbeck what he likes about this job, he smiles and says he likes to be outdoors. I try to imagine what the fire line looks like before Stenbeck confirms that yes, it is hot, but the weather is still happening as a fire is raging. During the last fire of the season in 2024, Stenbeck awoke to find frost covering his tent. He then donned his gear—a heavy ensemble that includes Nomex pants and jacket, fire-resistant boots like Nick’s or Whites, as well as a hard hat, water, hand tool, first-aid kit, and fire shelter—and got back to work fighting fire.
Fire bugs, the nearly 40 species of insects that are drawn to heat and smoke, pose another added risk to firefighters on the line. In the last season alone, Stenbeck watched three firefighters airlifted to medical facilities after entering anaphylactic shock from stings. In one summer, he counted 37 stings himself. Bears, displaced, fatigued, and sometimes injured, remain outside the perimeter of the fire as they search for food, often in the form of a firefighter’s lunch sack. As firefighters traverse on foot toward the fire line, mosquitoes are a near constant whine, and among the litany of precautions a person takes every day, they’ll also be checking for ticks each night.
Uncertainty as Wildfire Season Approaches
With recent layoffs across multiple federal agencies, there might be fewer boots on the ground facing those hazards as the summer progresses. For instance the return of Incident Management Team staff meteorologists—team members supplied by the NOAA who are essential to fighting fire—may also be in jeopardy. The meteorologists work closely alongside the DNR and other agencies to give accurate predictions of when fire season might start and how the weather will influence a fire incident.
“We don’t know what the status of these employees are going to be during this round of layoffs,” Rodruck says. It’s these “small, downstream-type effects,” that will ultimately determine how well agencies are able to fight fires this summer. What will those downstream effects mean for our public lands? According to Rodruck, it’s too early to tell.
Stenbeck, along with others on his team, will be preparing for the 2025 fire season with the mentality that it isn’t a sprint, but a marathon. “It isn’t a matter of if it starts, but when,” Stenbeck says.
Will those who are needed make it to the fire line this season? Let’s hope so for the sake of our communities, wildlife and the forests and trails we love.
Until completing this interview, Bri Loveall had never considered what wildland firefighting looked like. She wishes all firefighting personnel a safe fire season.
