As I see people complaining about the smoke all over the continental US I wanted to put out the reminder that most US Wildland Firefighters are seasonal “Forestry Technicians”. A Forestry Technician does not get the same benefits as somebody classified as a “Firefighter”, they work seasonally with little upward mobility, very few benefits and in the most dangerous career classification which is the “Logging Workers” classification with 82.2 deaths per 100k (6x higher than Police Officers).
Recently Federal Forestry Technicians working fire were temporarily brought up to the equivalent of a $15 wage. While that change is positive, more needs to be done to improve retention of wildland firefighters (forestry technicians) including better benefits, the option of stable year round work and allowing seasonal time in positions to be counted towards retirement.
As the millennial generation ages out of being prime age for this work and Gen Z (which is 1/3 the size of the Millennial Generation) moves into this work there will likely be shortages of people to work fire and a workforce that is aging. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know that making this job more stable and year round is a good start and actually classifying the people doing the firefighting as firefighters would be a big step towards solving those retention issues.
Wildland Firefighters are expected to be able to hike 4 miles per hour with 45 pounds, work 16+ hour days and be away from home for weeks at a time. There are very few other professions we ask this from and those professions often pay in the six figure range. That smoke from Canadian wildfires that you are breathing now is what a good day for a wildland firefighter looks like smoke wise. Wildland Firefighters lose 11% of their lung capacity every year, they regain that capacity by exercising in the off season.
As a former Wildland Firefighter turned Education Consultant I have my set of opinions about how to fix these problems. Making students all over the US aware of these careers rather than just the people in rural and western parts of the US is a good start. The real fix though is turning Wildland Firefighting into a job where non-supervisory employees can have a middle class lifestyle, politically I don’t see that happening soon, but change is in the works.