SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Been another devastating and dangerous summer of wildfires across much of the world. More than 8 million acres have burned this year in the U.S., and at least four wildland firefighters have lost their lives fighting blazes. Justin Brown has been a federal wildland firefighter for 17 years. He's also a union representative for the National Federation of Federal Employees, and he joins us now from Susanville, California. Thanks so much for being with us.
JUSTIN BROWN: Thank you, Mr. Simon.
SIMON: What's it like on the ground when you're fighting a wildfire?
BROWN: It can be pretty chaotic, especially at the first junction of it. Initial attack usually is a lot of trying to make snap decisions on whether we jump on the fire or, if it's in a community, trying to make sure that everybody's taken care of and that we can get everyone evacuated as quickly as possible. So it's kind of a multifunction, a lot of moving parts and variables that we're all trying to figure out pretty rapidly. So a lot of controlled chaos.
SIMON: And I'm going to guess, not four hours and then break for lunch.
BROWN: No. So we typically work 16 hours on, eight hours off. Typical assignments, 14 to 21 days, and then we get three days down. But in that initial attack phase, I think the longest I've ever worked on an initial attack was 53 hours straight. So you're just kind of...
SIMON: Yeah.
BROWN: ...Catching some shut-eye where you can, and you just keep working.
SIMON: Can you help us appreciate all the dangers that a firefighter faces?
BROWN: Yeah. No, there's a fair amount all across the board. I mean, just driving there, trying to get on scene is probably one of the most dangerous statistically that we have. Most of our fatalities and injuries are caused by driving, and then secondary is tree strikes.
So you're going into an environment that, you know, out in the woods or out in the brush, is ever changing due to weather conditions as well as drought conditions and how the fuel responds to all of that. And then you add in that chaos of the initial attack or a fast-moving fire, and you start to get all of these things that stack up.
SIMON: Have wildfires changed in the more than 15 years you've been fighting them?
BROWN: Yeah. Early in my career, I mean, nobody had really talked about anything more than, like, a fire whirl or, like, the size of a dust devil. Over the years, we started seeing more and more fires with fully formed columns that would rotate and become a fire tornado. The growth of fires - I mean, it was typical when I first started that you'd hear about a large-scale fire maybe getting up to 50- to 80,000 acres. Now you're hearing about - 200,000 acres is pretty normal or half a million acres, like some of the stuff that they're seeing up in Washington and Oregon.
SIMON: I have to ask, Mr. Brown, of course, the Trump administration has cut jobs in the U.S. Forest Service. Do you believe that's affected your ability to fight fires?
BROWN: I do. I think from the time when they did the massive firings of a lot of probationary employees throughout the federal service, as well as the - this merger with the Wildland Fire Service that people are trying to push through the deferred resignation programs that we saw at the tail end of last year, as well as this forest service reorg that's happening currently, it's caused either through direct action, the firing of those probationary employees or through indirect of folks just basically not wanting to deal with the chaos within the federal service leaving the amount of folks with good institutional knowledge that helped us to support us on fires. All of that we've just been losing at a extreme rate over the last two years.
SIMON: We should say that the chief of the Forest Service, Tom Schultz, says that the changes haven't reduced the nation's capacity to fight wildfires. And the administration says it's trying to consolidate firefighting capabilities among these various agencies. What's your reaction?
BROWN: I mean, I don't think that's true at all on any level, but that's not affecting us 'cause I think a majority of the public doesn't understand, as well as even some of the people within our firefighting workforce, how much we rely on the nonfire personnel that have fire qualifications and do the logistical support, as well as help us with all of the things that allow us to actually go out there and fight fire. And by diminishing that side of the workforce, it does directly affect how we fight fire.
SIMON: Justin Brown is a federal wildland firefighter. Mr. Brown, thanks so much for joining us.
BROWN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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