The government is literally telling firefighters “help is not on the way”

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Every spring, Forest Service fire leaders meet to plan for the upcoming fire season. This year, some employees were shocked by the blunt remarks made during a meeting with forest supervisors and fire staff officers from across the Intermountain West. “We were told, ‘Help is not on the way,’” said one employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job. “I’ve never been told that before.”

Agency leaders already knew it might be a bad wildfire season, made worse by having fewer hands available to help out. According to the employee High Country News spoke to, the Forest Service lost at least 1,800 fire-qualified, or “red-carded,” employees through layoffs, deferred resignation, and retirement offers. In total, 4,800 people left the agency.

“We were told: Don’t commit to an attack thinking the cavalry is going to come,” the employee said. As fire activity continues to pick up across much of the West, that warning rings true.

The Forest Service claims it recently reached 99 percent of its firefighting hiring goal, with almost 11,300 wildland firefighters. But a recent ProPublica investigation and internal communications obtained by High Country News paint a grimmer picture than what the public is seeing.

ProPublica’s review of internal agency data found that more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs — over one-fourth of all the agency’s firefighting jobs — were vacant as of July 17. The Guardian also reported that vacancy rates were highest in the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain Regions, at 39 percent and 37 percent, respectively.

The Department of Agriculture, which houses the Forest Service, disputes this. “ProPublica’s analysis doesn’t reflect our current fire response capacity,” spokesperson Cat McRae told High Country News in an email. “Their numbers likely come from outdated org charts and unfunded positions.” In an email, ProPublica confirmed that their data excluded unfunded positions. According to McRae, “the Forest Service is fully prepared and operational to protect individuals and communities from wildfires.”

But in a memo shared with HCN, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told agency leaders on July 16 that “as expected, the 2025 Fire Year is proving to be extremely challenging.”

“We know the demand for resources outpaces their availability,” Schultz wrote. He requested that all red-carded employees, including IT and human resource staff, be made available for fire assignments. “We have reached a critical point in our national response efforts, and we must make every resource available.”

Much of the Western US is expected to experience above-normal wildfire activity over the next few months. Already, the Forest Service has asked at least 1,400 people with fire qualifications who had resigned to come back. After all, firefighting is a group effort.

“All those people matter,” said Dave Whittekiend, formerly the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache forest supervisor. “Once it goes beyond an initial attack, it takes all the logistics. It’s like setting up a small city.”

Whittekiend, who retired in May, had also attended this spring’s planning meeting for forest leaders in Nevada, Utah, and parts of Idaho and Wyoming, where he heard the same warning about limited help. “It was creating a sense of urgency,” he said. “It was pretty direct: ‘We are seeing changes, and so be careful about how you choose your strategies and what you think you might be able to do with a fire.’”

“We were told: Don’t commit to an attack thinking the cavalry is going to come.”

Whittekiend pointed out that — even before all the layoffs and resignations this spring — the Forest Service sometimes struggled to get through busy fire seasons. Firefighters have been called in from Canada, Mexico, and Australia when resources are stretched too thin, and sometimes National Guard or military troops are deployed.

“We’ve never had all the people that we needed in some fire years,” he said. “That’s been an ongoing trend. It probably accelerated when a whole bunch of us said, ‘All right, we’re out of here’” — including employees in overhead positions, like the people who buy food and organize shower trailers and outhouses for fire camps, as well as staffers who take weather forecasts and do safety checks on firefighting operations. More than 10,530 people are currently assigned to wildfires; as of August 1, there are 35 large fires nationwide.

Meanwhile, just last week, the Department of Agriculture announced a widespread reorganization to further slim down and consolidate the workforce. Fort Collins, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah, were designated as two of the five new “hub” locations and the only offices that will be located in the entire West. The Forest Service will “phase out” the nine regional offices that currently exist, six of which are in the West, over the next year. Standalone research stations will be consolidated into one station in Fort Collins, while the Fire Science Lab in Missoula, Montana, will remain as is.

The elimination of the Forest Service regional offices throughout the West, which divided the territory into the Pacific Northwest, Northern, Rocky Mountain, Southwestern, and Intermountain regions, is expected to cause even more employees to leave. “I’m going to guess that there will be people who will leave rather than move,” Whittekiend said. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that up to half of staff may not relocate, according to Politico.

It’s a familiar scene, echoing the lackluster response when the Trump administration moved the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. Only three out of the 328 employees who were supposed to relocate to the new headquarters actually did so — despite the millions of dollars the reorganization cost.

Photo illustration image sources: Tipover East Prescribed Fire, Kaibab National Forest, Arizona, in 2017. David Hercher/U.S. Forest Service; A firefighter works the fire line on the Sitgreaves Complex Fire in the Kaibab National Forest in 2014. Holly Krake/U.S. Forest Service; Firefighters start a back fire to help suppress the 2013 Rim Fire, which burned in Stanislaus National Forest, California. Mike McMillan/U.S. Forest Service; Plumas Hotshots in 2008. Courtesy of the California Interagency Hotshots Steering Committee/U.S. Forest Service