If you’ve ever driven through an area ravaged by wildfire, you’ve likely noticed signs on fences and driveways thanking firefighters. Performing critical services, firefighters are among the most celebrated of our public servants.
So plans to alter the way America battles wildfires — through the proposed creation of a $3.7 billion U.S. Wildland Fire Service at the Department of Interior — has raised some eyebrows.
Some groups, such as the Center for Western Priorities, called the move a “performative gesture that will cause chaos.”
Others, including Partners in Wildfire Prevention and the International Association of Firefighters, lauded the decision, pointing out that “the current patchwork of wildfire prevention measures is not working for states” and “a comprehensive, national solution is needed.”
The idea of a singular wildfire agency has been bounced around for decades, so why is this time any different?
The proposed new agency would build off a presidential executive order issued earlier this month focused on some basic firefighting tenets — emphasizing strengthening firefighting compacts and partnerships and modifying or eliminating rules that impede the use of prescribed fire — while also calling for the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service, and the Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), to consolidate their wildfire fire programs by mid-September “to the maximum degree practicable.”
The proposed federal budget for next year takes it a step further by proposing an entirely new wildland fire agency. Its creation would take an act of Congress, but the idea already has bipartisan support. Sens. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) introduced a bill earlier this year that would consolidate “federal wildland fire preparedness, suppression, and recovery efforts under an agency of the Department of the Interior.”
Brett Taylor, wildland urban interface community coordinator at Truckee Meadows Fire and a former Nevada Division of Forestry battalion chief, said in an interview he could see wildfire response consolidation cutting down on bureaucratic red tape — one of the main reasons that Nevada was interested in joining interstate wildfire compacts. And the executive order’s call for a new “technology roadmap” could be a boon to firefighting efforts.
And, as the U.S. Forest Service points out, no individual agency has enough firefighters, engines, aircraft or equipment to manage all wildfires occurring under their jurisdiction.
But it could also hurt.
“It sounds OK on paper, but when you turn the page on how to do it, you realize how complicated it is and there’s a ton of reasons it hasn’t been done before,” said a person familiar with the matter granted anonymity to speak freely with The Nevada Independent.
One of the key functions of the BLM and Forest Service isn’t just fighting fire — it’s doing work such as prescribed burns and mechanical thinning to improve forest health and prevent fires from igniting in the first place. The Forest Service alone conducts about 4,500 prescribed fires each year, and the BLM has performed wildfire mitigation work on hundreds of thousands of acres of land that it manages.
But, as a 2008 Congressional report noted, “A separate fire agency would likely emphasize suppression, rather than management to reduce wildfire damages.”
We’ve seen before that suppression, without mitigation, doesn’t work.
In the 1930s, the Forest Service implemented its “10 a.m. policy,” mandating that all wildfires be under control by 10 a.m. the following day. That total fire suppression policy is in large part why forest debris built up to dangerous levels, and “the 10 a.m. policy is a strategy of the past that unfortunately helped create the wildfire crisis of today,” according to the Forest Service.
Officials expect minimal Nevada changes
Despite proposed federal changes, Nevada officials are heading into fire season with their same ready-for-battle mentality, this year bolstered by easier access to resources. Earlier this month, Gov. Joe Lombardo signed SB19, allowing the state to enter into the Great Plains Wildland Fire Protection Compact and the Northwest Wildland Fire Protection Agreement.
And although the state has already experienced several hundred fires, including the recent Conner Fire that burned more than 17,000 acres in Douglas County, what’s happening at the federal level hasn’t affected Nevada’s ability to respond to fires thus far, State Fire Warden Kacey KC told The Nevada Independent.
“I don’t know what it will look like specifically for Nevada until we know more of what the structure is,” she said. “We plan to be as engaged as they will let us be in the process.”
Federal officials also say it is business as usual in Nevada when it comes to firefighting.
“We’re going to continue to work together, whether we’re one agency or five different agencies,” Humboldt Toiyabe National Forest Fire Management Officer Gwen Sanchez said earlier this month at a public wildfire panel in Reno.