Some of the wildland fire management and training changes were made because of the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, while others were because of the increasing frequency of large, destructive wildfires across the country.
Prescribed burns
The Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire was caused by pile burns that the Forest Service set as part of forest management practices.
The biggest change to the prescribed fire program is the planning process, according to Catherine McRae, Forest Service national press officer.
"We have implemented new elements to consider in the 'go/no go' checklist as well as a new approval and briefing process. All units had to meet all of the near-term requirements in the national review before they could resume prescribed burning," McRae said.
In January, the Forest Service released a plan to expand prescribed fire training in western states and created a western prescribed-fire training curriculum, which will "increase the pace of prescribed fire training-to-qualification in the Western United States, provide trainees real-time experience in different fuel types and terrain, and ultimately increase national prescribed fire resource capacity," according to the strategy document.
Streamlining wildfire management
At the beginning of April, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group adopted a new strategy for managing more complex wildfires. The change was recommended in early 2020.
Wildfires and all natural disaster incidents are graded under FEMA by complexity from one to five. Five are the smallest, shortest and least complex, while one are the most complicated and largest disasters, which require more people, equipment and money to respond to.
Before, there was one group of people trained to manage Type 2 fires and another group trained to respond to Type 1 disasters. Now, those groups have been collapsed together, so that all complex incident management teams are trained to respond to Type 1 and Type 2 disasters, according to Jesse Bender, incident workforce development coordinator.
"One of the issues that we've had is that the number and frequency of Type 1 incidents has been on the rise over the past decade and beyond, but our number of Type 1 teams has stayed very static for easily 20 years," Bender said.
The new complex incident management teams give more flexibility for responding to complicated disasters.
"We're not bound to just these 16 teams can respond to this type of incident, and only these teams can respond to this. We now have the larger number of teams that could respond to either type of incident depending on what it happens to be," Bender said.
Some states still have Type 1 or Type 2 teams, but most interagency teams are becoming complex incident management teams. New Mexico relies on the five interagency teams that work in the Southwest to manage Type 1 and Type 2 wildfires.
Firefighter pay
Since fiscal year 2022, federal wildland firefighters have been getting a temporary pay boost. That pay boost could go away, but the Forest Service is pushing to make it permanent.
The supplemental pay gave 14,000 Forest Service and 5,000 Department of Interior firefighters an extra $20,000 annually, or 50 percent of their base pay in 2022, whichever amount is lower. Originally passed as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, Congress has allocated appropriations for the pay supplement several times so that it will continue through the end of fiscal year 2024.
"However, we need to bring stability to the program through a permanent pay fix that accurately reflects the valued work our wildland firefighters perform for the American people every day," McCrae said.
The Forest Service has been providing technical assistance to legislation working its way through Congress that would offer special base rates and premium pay for firefighters and support staff, McCrae said.
"Union officials for the National Federation of Federal Employees Forest Service Council expect 30-50% of Forest Service wildland firefighters to leave for higher-paying jobs if their base pay returns to previous levels, in some cases only $15 per hour," McCrae said.
Firefighters have already left for state, county and private industry jobs with better pay and better work-life balance, according to McCrae.
Congressional perspective
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D- N.M., wants the Forest Service to use human oversight and technology like drones and heat sensing technology to ensure a fire is not hot before walking away.
"We want them to utilize all of the resources that they have at their disposal when they fight fires," Leger Fernández said. "And we know that both Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon, if they would have had a more robust approach, they wouldn't have gotten out of control. They have now said that they will make sure that they do not leave prescribed burns, that they actually will have people on the ground to make sure it's not hot."
Increasing wildland firefighter pay was also key, Leger Fernández said, and she plans to continue to push to increase firefighter pay.
"We are asking these wildland firefighters to put their health and lives at risk in order to protect not just the natural landscape of the forest, but also the homes, the churches, the capillas, the moradas and it's important that they be compensated in relationship to the risk that they are taking on," she said.
Going forward, Leger Fernández wants the federal government to improve its ability to help reclaim both private and public land after a fire, so that fire-affected areas are better protected from post-fire flooding.
"Forest fires and flooding do not recognize boundaries," she said.
FEMA needs to be better prepared to meet the needs of western states dealing with firefighters and post-fire flooding, said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D- N.M.
When it comes to dealing with forest fires, the federal government needs to maintain accountability and transparency to regain public trust, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D- N.M., said, and make the people impacted by the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire whole.
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©2024 the Albuquerque Journal (Albuquerque, N.M.)
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