Friday, April 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Our next-door neighbors in California are urging the federal government to expand its wildland firefighting workforce from a seasonal operation to one that works year-round, which, unfortunately, is an idea whose time has come. Nevada should get fully behind it.
The increasingly extreme effects of climate change have extended what was once the wildfire season to 365 days per year. Meanwhile, as we’ve seen throughout the West but particularly in California, the intensity and scope of wildfires also has ratcheted up as global warming has affected weather patterns and growth cycles of plants.
And there’s no break from the drought on the horizon. Far from it, actually: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s spring outlook report, issued last month, predicted worsening drought conditions in coming months in Nevada and throughout the Southwest. Combined with paltry rainfall in 2020 and below-average snowfall in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada over the winter, we’re looking at a year that will be parched even by our standards.
“The nearly West-wide drought is already quite severe in its breadth and intensity, and unfortunately it doesn’t appear likely that there will be much relief this spring,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in an Associated Press story.
The repercussions of this are deeply worrisome, and not just in terms of an increased risk of wildfire. Southern Nevada and neighboring regions that rely mostly on the Colorado River for their water supply may be looking at water cutbacks if conditions don’t improve soon.
But as we contend with the water issues, the idea of expanding federal wildfire service is a step that should be taken immediately.
California’s U.S. senators and more than 20 of its representatives made the request in a letter to the Departments of Agriculture and Interior this week, asking that federal firefighting positions that are currently classified as seasonal be redefined as permanent. Of the government’s 10,000 firefighters, currently about half are seasonal.
The letter noted that the federal government owns 57% of forest lands in California, which is coming off of a horrific year in which wildfires burned 4.25 million acres, killed 33 people and destroyed more than 10,000 structures.
Expanding the services would not only keep people safer, it would have benefits for firefighters as well.
As firefighter Anastasia Selby wrote in a column for the investigative journalism publication High Country News, seasonal employment doesn’t offer the main benefits of federal government employment — health insurance, paid time off and retirement packages.
“Access to health care should be essential for firefighters, and many current seasonal employees would be happy to trade winters off for steady employment and benefits,” Selby wrote. “Meanwhile, year-round employment could help stabilize the Forest Service budget, clear its $5.2 billion maintenance backlog and, over time, create healthier forests and grasslands, increasing carbon sinks and leading to less destructive wildfires.”
In Nevada, where 81% of our land mass is owned by the U.S. government, the proposed expansion of fire service also makes sense.
The concept of a fire season is history here too, as we saw this past November when a massive and fast-moving fire forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 people in Reno. Clearly, wildfires here are no longer largely relegated to the hot summer months.
Southern Nevada didn’t endure anything to that level last year, but wildfire did strike close to home when the Mahogany Fire burned about 2,500 acres in the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area in late June and early July. In addition, a sharp increase in human-caused fires that luckily were put out quickly prompted authorities to issue a plea to the public to take fire-safety precautions while visiting public lands.
With another bone-dry spring and summer on the way, it will once again be critical for Southern Nevadans to help protect the community against wildfires by observing posted fire warnings, dousing campfires, not throwing cigarette butts out of car windows, putting spark arrestors on off-road vehicles, etc.
Meanwhile, the state should join California in pressing for an expansion of the federal wildlands workforce. Facing a heightened risk of wildfires for what appears to be the foreseeable future, the West needs all the year-round firefighting resources it can get.
