When Dan Gibbs put on his firefighting gear and responded to the Cameron Peak Fire as it ripped through more than 326 square miles of northern Colorado in 2020, his 15-member attack crew was not staffed by full-time firefighters.
The executive director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources instead was joined by a hodgepodge of U.S. Forest Service employees: a forest technician, a campgrounds manager, three seasonal hotshot firefighters. The crew worked its way through neighborhoods surrounded by the blaze and tried to keep homes from burning.
Now, after a slew of firings at the Forest Service and an ongoing federal hiring freeze that has complicated seasonal hiring, Colorado leaders fear that fewer crews like the one Gibbs joined will be available for this year’s peak fire season.
“These people were putting their lives on the line to protect critical infrastructure,” Gibbs said. “And, potentially, people like that won’t be able to go out on fires anymore.”
While Forest Service officials have said firefighting positions will be spared from cuts to the federal workforce, it’s unclear whether the agency’s hiring of critical seasonal firefighting staff is on schedule or if the agency will hire as many seasonals as in years past, multiple experts said. A lack of information from the Forest Service about plans for fire hiring and staffing has created broad uncertainty across the state as the peak summer wildfire season approaches.
The Forest Service manages about 15 million acres across Colorado and, as the largest wildland firefighting force in the country, manages national firefighting resources.
“It’s really hard to wrap our minds around,” said Mike Morgan, director of the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control. “If I could understand it, I would at least understand what we could all be doing to prepare for what it might mean. But it’s kind of all over the board.”
A spokesperson for the Forest Service on Tuesday said more than 1,000 firefighter positions were approved for an exemption from the hiring freeze, with more positions under review, but did not answer a question asking how many total firefighters the agency planned to hire and how that compared to previous years. Last year, the agency hired more than 11,000 wildland firefighters, according to its website.
Colorado, like many other states in the West, relies on federal firefighting teams to battle large-scale fires across its federal public lands, which cover about a third of the state. Even if new President Donald Trump’s administration lifts the hiring freeze, the delay could make it harder to hire, train and deploy firefighters before peak season, said David Wolf, the head of the Wildland Fire Section for the Colorado State Fire Chiefs.
“The challenges are getting harder, the threats are getting bigger and we’re decreasing our ability to respond to the situation,” he said.
Fire experts interviewed by The Denver Post said the firing of 3,400 probationary employees across the Forest Service last month will also decimate the number of people available to respond to fires and provide behind-the-scenes support to the nation’s federal wildfire force. Hundreds of firings late last week at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service could also impact wildfire response, officials said, though the broader Trump administration directives that led to mass firings across the federal government are under legal challenge.
Forest Service representatives have repeatedly declined to say how many Colorado-based workers were included in the mass firings, though state leaders estimated at least 90 positions were cut.
“It’s a disaster,” Bill Avey, a former acting director of national fire and aviation management for the Forest Service, said of the firings. “I think it’s going to drastically affect the resources that are available for wildfire response.”
Many Forest Service employees have firefighting qualifications even if they do not work on fire issues day to day. They are called upon during wildfires to clear out fire-prone fuels, create fire barriers and mop up fires after they are contained. Those without firefighting qualifications also step in and provide critical support services, like providing public information, coordinating food supplies and moving equipment.
“A fire organization is not just a hotshot crew or an air tanker coming in or a helicopter delivering firefighters,” said Mike Dudley, another former national fire and aviation management director for the Forest Service. “It’s the dispatchers, it’s the contractors. … It’s all the people that work outside of fire that come when the fire bell rings.”
Impact on Colorado forests
Washington, D.C.-based communications staff for the Forest Service declined to provide a breakdown of the probationary positions eliminated this month. Probationary workers are recent hires or workers who had just moved into a year-round position from seasonal work.
“Protecting the people and communities we serve, as well as the infrastructure, businesses, and resources they depend on to grow and thrive, remains a top priority for the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and the Forest Service,” the agency said in an emailed statement. “We are incredibly proud of our firefighters, and we will ensure they have the training, tools, and resources they need to work alongside our state and local partners, as well as private landowners, to continue the work to protect lives and livelihoods.”
A Forest Service employee who was terminated in the mass firings was the sole permanent trails employee responsible for more than 360 miles of trails in his district in the heavily trafficked Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests. He was responsible for overseeing volunteer and youth crews working to maintain the trails and for ensuring that they were trained and met trail requirements.
He and the crews often happened upon illegal campfires still smoldering and would put them out before they spread.
“When you go hiking this summer, you might be going through an obstacle course,” said the employee, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity to protect his appeal of his firing. “These areas are going to become less accessible and less enjoyable to hike.”
He was also certified to work wildfires, and in 2020 he said he helped with fire operations on both the East Troublesome and Cameron Peak fires.
“The lack of having these extra bodies for fires will really come to light when fire season comes into full effect,” he said.
About 21 probationary employees in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests were fired, said one of the fired employees, who also spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity out of fear that speaking publicly would jeopardize her appeal. She worked across public lands agencies for more than a decade and said she was weeks away from moving out of probationary status.
The firings mean that, along with impacts to recreation access in northern Colorado, permitting processes for grazing, logging and development will take longer, the employee said. Ski area improvements will likely take longer, as will access for utilities that need to build infrastructure on Forest Service land.
The forest was already understaffed and workers were struggling to do more with less, she said. Approximately 112 of the 296 full-time positions at Medicine Bow-Routt were vacant as of December, she said.
“This isn’t just about us right now, and me and my insular little job. But it’s about the land that is for everyone in the United States — they are directly affected by what the Forest Service does,” she said.
“Everything is in question”
Broad federal funding freezes implemented by the Trump administration have thrown wildfire prevention partnerships between the state and federal agencies into limbo, said Gibbs of the Department of Natural Resources. The department manages some 350 federal grants worth about $300 million for a wide range of initiatives, he said.
“Everything is in question,” Gibbs said. “Everything. We have no guidance from our federal partners about what potentially is in and what potentially is not. It is total uncertainty with our federal partners right now.”
State and federal leaders in recent years have worked to create strong partnerships as wildfire season stretches year-round and fires become more intense, he said. Snowpack across the state is below average, he noted, which could lead to a more intense fire year.
“We have worked so hard to bring down barriers, and now it’s like barriers are popping up right in front of my face,” Gibbs said. “Coloradans deserve better. We all deserve better.”
It’s also unclear whether the service will hire another critical group of employees called administratively determined staff. Those are often retired Forest Service employees who can be called upon to help staff incident management teams on large fires, said Michael Davis, a public information and liaison officer for the Colorado Southwest Type 3 Incident Management Team.
“I’m a lead public information officer, but I can’t do this all by myself,” Davis said. “And a lot of the people I rely on are on pause because they’re ADs and haven’t been recertified — or they’ve been fired. It’s very, very concerning.”
The Forest Service did not respond to an emailed question asking about the status of administratively determined positions.
Mountain communities lose staff
Nervous Summit County homeowners with property near Forest Service land have been calling the county to ask about staffing and firefighting plans, county manager David Rossi said.
Besides federal staff, the county relies on two fire districts to respond to fires as well as the sheriff’s office, though it does not employ any certified firefighters. Rossi worried that the county could be caught shorthanded if its fire district staff responded to fires elsewhere in the country and a fire broke out locally.
“People are worried about what’s going on and we have no answers,” he said.
The staffing cuts and hiring freeze threaten the county’s wildfire prevention programs, Summit County’s commissioners wrote in a letter Tuesday to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service. The county pays the service to hire workers to burn slash piles and conduct fuels reduction.
“The risks these cuts present to our rural resort community infrastructure are not just financial — they risk lives,” the letter states. “Therefore, the impacts of such drastic measures resulting in the loss of USFS personnel simply cannot be overstated.”
Federal authorities assured Summit County leaders that firefighting resources would be available come peak fire season, Rossi said.
“However, we’re not really willing to trust that comment,” he said. “We’re having a hard time understanding who exactly would lead any sort of firefighting effort.”
A little farther west on Interstate 70, Eagle County leaders face similar worries. At least 15 workers at the White River National Forest were terminated, according to a letter from county commissioners asking the USDA to reinstate the employees.
“Myself and commissioners and the entire county have grave concerns about fire risk,” said Jeff Shroll, the Eagle County manager. “This isn’t Washington, D.C., swamp draining — this is boots-on-the-ground people who do an amazing job taking care of the busiest, most visited forest in the country.”
The federal staffing changes also affect areas outside of fire prevention and response. For five years, the county has paid the Forest Service to staff some of its most-visited recreation areas, like Shrine Pass and the East Vail trail system.
Those positions will not be filled for the 2025 season because of the hiring freeze, even though they were county funded, Shroll said.
Last year, the 11 seasonal workers hired under the partnership collected 5,127 pounds of garbage from dispersed campsites, removed 189 illegal fire rings and extinguished 32 abandoned campfires that had been left smoldering, according to a Forest Service report on the program.
“That’s just a simple wind gust away from creating a massive problem,” Shroll said.
Eagle County’s staff had also worked with Forest Service workers to help transition the management of Sweetwater Lake from federal to state control. But nearly all the Forest Service employees working on that project have since been fired or resigned, including a resignation by the top supervisor of the White River forest, Shroll said.
“I don’t know how many people are left in the Glenwood office. I don’t even know,” he said. “Which makes it even more distressing — who do you call?”
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter.