Federal firefighters needed for recovery efforts in the aftermath of the deadly January wildfires and to battle future wildfires in Southern California may be out of work due to orders trimming the federal workforce and a hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration.
“The biggest issue is they are inviting firefighters to resign, as per the deferred resignation program. And they’ve got a hiring freeze on that doesn’t allow us to fill vacancies,” said Rob Arnold, a staff member with the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) on Thursday, Feb. 13.
A U.S. District Court judge on Wednesday cleared the way for Trump’s buyout offers to millions of federal employees, overcoming a lawsuit by labor unions.
“I know multiple people who were supposed to start work on Monday and we not able to,” said Rachel Granberg, a wildland firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service and also a representative of the NFFE union who may be out of a job.
About 18,000 federal firefighters, including “hot shot crews,” perform multiple tasks in federal lands and in wild areas that interface with residential communities throughout the United States. They clear brush, do prescribed burns that reduce fire danger, as well as fight fires on the front lines, Arnold said.
Any loss of firefighters could not come at a worse time for Southern California, which has seen global climate change produce stronger winds and more intense fires, such as the Eaton and Palisades fires a month ago that destroyed thousands of homes in the Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Altadena and Pasadena in the worst natural disaster in the modern history of Los Angeles County.
The Eaton fire in Altadena and Pasadena caused 17 deaths and destroyed 9,413 structures. There were another 12 fatalities and 6,835 structures destroyed in the Palisades fire.
USFS crews fought alongside firefighters from the City of Los Angeles, L.A. County Fire and other agencies from out of the area, battling the two devastating blazes.
“Federal crews were even credited with saving an entire neighborhood in the Eaton fire,” wrote U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat from Burbank, in a Feb. 7 letter to the chiefs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees the U.S. Forest Service (USFS); U.S. Department of Interior and Office of Management and Budget.
Schiff said he was “alarmed” that seasonal federal wildland firefighters were not exempt from the Jan. 20 federal hiring freeze and urged the administration to do so. “I am deeply concerned that the hiring freeze will leave Californians and communities in fire-prone areas around the United States vulnerable,” he wrote.
The USDA/USFS in an emailed response asking about the hiring freeze, said the agency is awaiting Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to determine how to proceed. Rollins was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Thursday afternoon.
“In the meantime, active management activities — including hazardous fuels reduction projects and prescribed fires — are being conducted under the agency’s other funding authorities, including annual appropriations,” according to a USDA spokesperson who did not identify themselves further in an email sent on Thursday.
Arnold, based in the Pacific Northwest, said he’s heard talk from forest leaders in Oregon that workers may be allowed to sign up for seasonal work soon. “But there is conflicting information as to whether seasonal employees can return,” he said.
About half of the federal firefighters are full-time workers, but the other half are seasonal workers. The latter must renew contracts for employment every year, including Granberg who could not do so, leaving her usual March start date in limbo.
Unless the freeze exempts firefighters, “we’re not going to have fire crews fully staffed,” she said.
“It’s a wildly risky move to invite your firefighter workforce to leave in February, a few weeks before you expect fire season to ramp up,” Arnold said.
On Feb. 11, California Democratic senator Alex Padilla and Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, plus 13 other Democratic senators wrote a letter urging Trump to reverse the onboarding freeze of federal seasonal firefighters.
“The bottom line is this: pausing the hiring and onboarding of federal seasonal firefighters — while historic wildfires destroy communities and upend livelihoods across the West — is simply irresponsible and dangerous,” wrote the senators.
The hiring freeze isn’t the only new setback for federal firefighters. Retention pay originally made available by former President Joe Biden’s administration to boost firefighter salaries is set to lapse in March. The loss of that money would cut compensation by as much as $20,000 per person.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.