The 2022 Wildland Fire Thread

Folks always fixate on air tankers and r****dant drops, but give me a heavy helicopter any day. Shorter turnaround, more precision, and lower drops help with dispersal and evaporation. You can really knock some fire down with a heavy working from a nearby dip site.

 

I'm sitting in Oregon where we've had a relatively cool spring. Not enough to change the long-term drought trend, but a nice respite. My days of responding to fires is pretty much done. Just teach classes these days.

Here's a nice video that covers some of the work done by Hot Shot crews. It's not surprising we have fewer and fewer folks interested in doing this kind of work.

 

Yeah, the thing is, people see this stuff as a one-off, not realizing or not admitting that the world they think they live in--or the world they want to live in--is gone. For example, it's inevitable that Glen Canyon Dam will be decommissioned and Lake Powell will be gone so we can hang on to Lake Mead water storage as long as possible. The news stories always focus on sea-level rise, but we're not ready for what's coming in the West. Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and many, many other smaller communities--they're all dead men walking at this point. If not from temps than from lack of water. Oh, we're also on track to burn 50%+ of western forests by 2050 and hundreds of places in the West, like Las Vegas, NM and Santa Fe depend on surface water from forests to supply their drinking water. Where do they go if it's not there anymore?

https://www.wateronline.com/doc/what-is-dead-pool-a-water-expert-explains-0001

 

OK, this will be longer than what you were expecting.

Beginning firefighter on an federal engine or hand crew is a GS-3, which is about $13 and hour. Recent Biden initiative guarantees everyone at least $15 per hour. Last year, the make-up was paid at the end of the year and it looks like something similar will happen this year. Though they may get something in place soon, they'll still have to go back and adjust everyone who has been working.

So, let's take the $15 as a given. Because most are seasonal employees, they can't work more than 1,039 hours, which includes training. That puts base pay at around $15,600.

In addition to base pay, you get overtime, which is time and a half for any hour worked beyond your base 40 per week. So, $22.50 for your overtime hours. Overtime hours are not included in your 1,039 restriction. That means you have about 6 months of work you can do before you hit the 1,039 hours. Now, Let's say you got hired on a Hot Shot crew in New Mexico this year. You start two weeks of training at the beginning of March because the forecasts are calling for fire conditions in April. Indeed, that is what happened this year. So, March, April, May, June, July, and August. At the end of August, you're out of hours. Meanwhile, we've still got September, October, and November to go for months with potential for large fires and your crew has to sub in people, which affects capacity and crew cohesion. Still, a Hot Shot can have anywhere from 600 to 1,000 overtime hours. Other types of firefighters will likely have less. (The most I ever did was a little over 600.) As you would expect, the average annual overtime hours are climbing rapidly and we'll soon have to put a cap on it for both mental and physical fatigue. After 120 days on the line, even the toughest dudes start to crash, so you definitely have to manage it.

120 days would be about 4 months or 16 weeks. Each week you have your 40 base hours and your 70 or more overtime hours. Most folks end up charging 110-115 hours per week. Do that several weeks in a row and you're feeling it.

You also get hazard pay of 25% of your regular pay. So, hazard pay for $15 would be an additional $3.75 an hour. That means the max you could make under regular conditions would be an overtime/hazard hour of $26.25. Hazard pay is a sore point because of how it's defined. If you're working on the line of an uncontrolled fire, you get hazard pay. If you're working the line of a prescribed fire, no hazard pay. If you have to climb a tree that's 50 feet tall or higher, you get hazard pay. For a tree that's 49 feet tall, no hazard pay. Pulling an injured guy off the fire line is hazard pay, but responding to an auto accident where you provide medical support and manage traffic is not hazardous. Smokejumpers get hazard pay when they are on the fire, but a parachute jump is not classified as hazardous. Yeah, it's stupid.

You can also sometimes get night differential if you are assigned to night shift. If you're working during the day and need to stay on overnight to catch a fire it's not considered a night schedule and so you don't get that. Same with Sunday differential, which is tough to get. Both of those can add an extra 25% to your hourly pay.

Putting aside night and Sunday differentials, you have your $15,600 base pay. Let's add 700 hours of overtime for $5,250. For hazard pay, let's say 65% of your hours are on the fire line. That gives you another $4,250 for a total of around $25,000 for 6 months of work.

Now, consider that you are away from home most of that time, only coming back for two day stretches, which is enough to sleep, pay bills, and do laundry. You're sleeping on the ground for most of that time. You're doing hard, physical work (using 6,000 or more calories per day) and often don't get a shower for 2-3 days at a time. It takes you 2-3 months to fully recover physically from those 6 months. Then there is the risk of not just fire but blowing out a knee on a slope, having a tree fall on you, a rock roll on you, falling down a slope, the massive amounts of driving between fires, etc.

So yeah, it's not close to enough money for the job and people are less and less willing to take payment in adrenalin and sunrises. We're have anywhere from a 10% to 25% vacancy rate depending on the region and it's a trend that is increasing appreciably every year.

 

Yes, pay has to go up considerably. The values at risk over the next 20-30 years will be enormous and we will need a robust suppression force along with massive amounts of money and hours devoted to prevention, preparation, and recovery. First thing to do is get rid of the 1039 rule so folks can have a full-time job and plan for their future--we hemorrhage ridiculous amounts of future leadership because people can't swing the intense 6 months with no guarantees for the next 6 months or even being rehired the following year.

 

Nice photo of some Hot Shots hiking around the fire to start working the far side. You have to be heads up and know what you are doing when you have fire below you. This will be a tough job.

 

In Arizona, north of Flagstaff.

 

We need another word besides drought. Drought implies a cycle with an eventual return to normal. This is not a drought cycle, but an era.