Somebody forgot their L.C.E.S.
?
From the poster above, sounds like these guys aren't trained as firefighters, but are expected to do that job. Can't blame too much if they aren't given the right tools and training.
I doubt that. The NWCG/ICS fire system is bloated out of control partially because it requires so much training and paperwork. I know dozens of skilled foresters who understand fire and actually know how the woods work but who aren't allowed to go fight fire because they work as foresters, not firefighters, and don't have the free time to sit through all the classroom training.
A bigger problem is that wildland firefighting as a career has been separated from forestry. So you have these kids out in the woods in a fire engine that have received all the appropriate fire training, but they haven't spent much time actually in the forest, or they're out of their home region in a completely different forest type. So mistakes happen from the top off of the Incident Command team (who are also frequently not from the region) on down.
Seasonal firefighting wages are sometimes questioned (they're usually higher than resource tech wages with huge potential for hazard pay/OT) because firefighting generates no income. And once firefighting was divorced from forestry or any other productive resource management, it became a huge money pit.
It's a negative feedback loop whereby forests aren't managed, so fire behavior gets worse, so they need more firefighters, which pulls resources away from forest management, so fires get worse....
It's not a good situation right now. But the only firefighters making $10/hr are prisoners/migrant hand crews or contractors. And if they don't like they pay, contractors can jump ship and get on the agency firefighting gravy train. At least in Region 1.
"We're only firefighters when we die, otherwise we're forestry technicians.
This is just referring to their official job classification. They want more pay than forest technicians, but they also want to lurk in their fire office all winter (while forest techs are still out working). The jobs should never have been separated.
(post is archived)