When wildland firefighters are on prescribed fires, they’re breathing the same smoke and facing many of the same hazards found on wildfires, but they don’t get the same hazard pay. That could soon change.
Resolving that disparity has been a longstanding demand of wildland firefighters. This week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management proposed to do just, and acknowledged the real dangers of prescribed fire.
“Prescribed fire duties expose employees to open flame, radiant and convective heat, smoke, unstable terrain, fire-weakened trees, and other physical, chemical, and biological hazards during ignition and patrol phases,” the recent Federal Register notice reads. “Safety practices and Personal Protection Equipment … reduce—but cannot eliminate—these risks.”
“The hazards of a prescribed fire are very similar to the hazards of a suppression fire,” said Max Alonzo, secretary-treasurer of the National Federation of Federal Employees, a union that represents many federal wildland firefighters and has advocated for this change.
Prescribed fires serve many purposes, including reducing the risk of severe, destructive wildfires; returning nutrients to the soil; killing invasive species and other ecological functions.
Firefighters make most of their money in the summer months, the most active time of year for wildfires, Alonzo explained. But having a pay bump for prescribed fire work in the offseason, he said, is “really going to help them out in the wintertime. It's going to keep these career wildland firefighters around.”
Comments on the proposal, which would give firefighters on prescribed burns the same extra 25% of their base pay that they get on wildfires, will be accepted through June 15.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
