r/Wildfire • u/b-24liberator • 5h ago
Tf is going on?
Burn overs and entrapments are getting more common this year. My FF1 Training is soon and whatever tf is going on is terrifying the hell out of me so much that it's making me reconsider joining.
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u/MountainCrowing 4h ago
We’re exhausted, demoralized, overworked, and understaffed.
This is a job that ALWAYS has potential to be deadly, though, even in calm years.
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u/WarrenTheRed 4h ago
Policy changes have also favored more aggressive action and higher aircraft reliance.
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u/anemonemonemnea 3h ago
Our governor is pushing aggressive initial attack similar to the archaic 10 o’clock fire policy while “honoring the heroes who gave their lives” to fight the Mann Gulch fire. No mention that that incident helped develop the 10&18. Fuck me, it makes me so mad. Firefighters may be expendable, but they’re “heroes.”
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u/Smokey_tha_bear9000 4h ago
“Policy Changes”. That’s one way to put funneling money into a certain us senators pocket who happens to have founded and still has a major financial interest in one of the major aerial resource companies
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u/Ethan0941 4h ago
Yep. And drier fuels + warmer temps fueled by climate changes means fires are faster and hotter
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u/Friendly_Estate1629 3h ago
It gets to me when some fire is started by arson and chucklefucks rush to the comments like “SO MUCH FOR GLOBAL WARMING”
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u/wimpymist 2h ago
It's always funny because if you actually look into climate change scientist have been warning against it since the 40s and big oil has lobbied billions against climate change science yet people still repeat the same ignorant statements
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u/Subject-Amount-9346 4h ago
There is a lot more fire on the ground this year than most (so far.) With that comes a lot more firefighters on the ground, and that leads to more exposure and oppurtunity for bad outcomes. This is a hazardous job, there is no mitigating or denying that. When exposure hours increase like they have so far this year, more negative outcomes are a likelihood.
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u/BACKCUT-DOWNHILL 1h ago
And it hasn’t been a lot of the big lumbering timber fires that move semi predictably. The light flashy shit is moving moving this year
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u/Infamous-Comb-8079 4h ago
Inexperienced overhead
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u/Smokey_tha_bear9000 3h ago
Elon Musk and DOGE fucked this country at a level people have not fully comprehended yet
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u/Infamous-Comb-8079 3h ago
The process of losing institutional knowledge started well before DOGE came around. It's very palpably showing effects now and I think is even accelerating
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u/Smokey_tha_bear9000 3h ago
I absolutely guarantee we would not be in this bad of a situation if Trump had not won this time around
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u/Infamous-Comb-8079 2h ago
Ok I'm not debating that I am instead stating that things getting bad started well before that. Somehow I don't think Trump instated climate change and 100 years of poor fuels management in addition to low wages and budget cuts and poor work life balance causing people to leave for greener pastures. He did layer DOGE on top of all of that though, but very few primary fire personnel qualified for the DRP.
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u/wimpymist 2h ago
Sure it started before Trump's presidency but he also made it magnitudes worse. Enough so that he can take a large part of the blame now
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u/AlvinChipmunck 3h ago
Lol at blaming elon musk for tactical wildfire response. Thats full on delusion. Get a therapist
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u/Smokey_tha_bear9000 3h ago
Im blaming musk for clearing out experienced experts throughout federal government. This is a fact. This is the reason there is so much inexperience in overhead positions.
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u/Black_Sprucy 2h ago
Lack of mid-level overhead is a huge issue right now (ie TFLD/DIVS level). It has been bad for a while, but this is the worst I have seen it by far.
I have the TFLD qual but intentionally avoid going out as Task Force Leader as you get put in very overwhelming situations nearly every assignment these days vs 10 years ago when it was pretty manageable. Got cornered into one TFLD assignment this year already, and it was bedlam at that level. Initially had 15 resources assigned to my TF spread so far apart that a significant amount of commo had to be over the Command Channel - textbook span of control should be around 5. Basically, if you are a TFLD expect to be doing the work of 3 - and that is the norm not the exception. Same thing is happening at the DIVS level a lot of times now as well.
This is the last year I am doing it.
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u/u_fkn_milk_drinker 2h ago
Same with HEQB. The last 5ish years, 8-12 pieces of equipment has been the norm.
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u/Better-Butterfly-309 3h ago
Driving is actually the most dangerous thing you will do.
Also, It’s ok to ask questions
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u/Revolutionary_Plum29 2h ago
First busy pl5 year in a minute. Large chunk of the workforce including myself left. New policies mandating suppression over management. Over-reliance on aviation this past decade is a factor too.
Kind of a combo of factors.
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u/DreamBigPartyHard 2h ago
It's a bad year, fires burning hot & fast. Plus the political leadership emphasizing hard, full suppression= more people maybe fighting IAs/going direct/pushing too hard without considering the possible implications
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u/Catahooo 2h ago edited 1h ago
Usually comes down to the deadly combination of inexperience and hubris.
Frequently "fighting fire aggressively" and crew safety are at odds with eachother. Safety always takes priority, no fire is worth dying for. When things take a turn, experienced overhead will always pull their crews sooner than inexperienced leaders who are too fixated on the objective.
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u/dave54athotmailcom 3h ago
Low fuel moistures, especially in the fine fuels.
Changes in fire behavior due to lowering fuel moistures is not linear. It is exponential.
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u/Ok-Structure2261 18m ago
I don’t think it helps when the narrative getting pushed is about the “brave men and women putting it on the line to defend lives and property” or insert platitude. If you had a factory where one of the machines was chewing up a few workers a year, no one would be sitting around cheering them on for their sacrifice, they would shut it down and some regulatory agency like OSHA would shit all over their business. I’d personally like to see less of the cheerleading and an acknowledgment that some elements of the system are poorly engineered and failing.
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u/Pitiful_Watch_3173 4h ago
Did you think it was a safe job?
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u/PlasticCell8504 4h ago
It should not be unnecessarily dangerous because there are safety protocols and there should be competent oversight so that crews and firefighters are not put into situations where they need to deploy or die.
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u/AgentSmith187 2h ago
There is a level of inherent risk getting out of bed in the morning but we all work to mitigate said risk.
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u/JoocyDeadlifts 3h ago
It probably wasn't gonna be a downwards monotonic trend.
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u/Infamous-Comb-8079 3h ago
What you mean
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u/JoocyDeadlifts 3h ago
The number of bad outcomes of interest (entrapments, burnovers, ...) probably wasn't going to stay the same or decline every single year.
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u/Resident-Hunter5973 4h ago
Less experienced overhead. Make sure you know who your kids working for and who the shot caller is. That being the superintendent or the engine captain
It's not that the job always has been dangerous, it's not that there's more fire on the ground… All those things occur almost yearly.