Firefighter shortage sparks fears as wildfires rage on out West
Record-high temperatures, drought have caused nearly 60 wildfires
Firefighter shortage sparks wildfire worries
FOX Business' Connell McShane reports from Morrison, CO amid a series of wildfires plaguing western states.
As wildfires continue to sweep across the Western states, a shortage of firefighters is igniting deeper fears.
FOX Business' Connell McShane joined ‘Varney & Co.’ Wednesday from hazy Morrison, Colorado, a small town reeling from several massive fires plaguing the state this week. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, nearly 60 wildfires blazed from Alaska to Wyoming recently — with Colorado enduring its fair share of damage — and there simply aren't enough people to put them out.
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"On the federal level, people complain about low pay, generally speaking — so they've been running low on manpower," McShane told host Stuart Varney. "Here on the local level, where we are here in Colorado, what you hear about is that you just don't have as many people volunteering to be firefighters as they did years ago."
The problem for local leaders, McShane asserted, is that they have trouble keeping up. With more than 14,000 firefighters covering close to a million acres across the nation, finding help in small towns is difficult.
McShane met with one local leader, Inter-Canyon Fire Chief, Dan Halstead, who explained that while incidents have doubled, staff has been cut in half.
"About 25 years ago when I joined the volunteer fire department, we had between 60-70 volunteers," said Halstead. "Today, we're at about 30 volunteers; our call volume in that time has nearly doubled, and the criticality, the acuity, of those emergency responses has also increased."
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The solution, Halstead maintained, is appealing to the federal government for use of their resources.
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"The shortage of firefighters is always a concern because as those fires grow in their size and intensity, we get very concerned about availability. And we would then have to, in a large fire, reach out to those federal resources," Halstead said.
But federal resources are thin, said McShane. And the White House is aware.
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Amid the growing disasters, President Biden and Vice President Harris are set to meet with governors from Western states, Cabinet officials and private sector partners Wednesday to discuss specific actions the public and private sector are each taking to strengthen prevention, preparedness, mitigation, and response efforts.
According to the White House, since 2015, the United States has experienced, on average, roughly 100 more large wildfires every year than the year before – and this wildfire season is already outpacing last season.
The Biden administration is working on a multi-point plan to help build a more responsive and resilient wildland firefighting workforce. The plan includes bolstering firefighter pay, extending the hiring of temporary firefighters, training and equipping military personnel — as well as aviation crews — to be ready to support wildland fires as needed, and funding and employing new research to improve early detection wildfire sensors.
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