Thanks To Trump, We're Not Prepared For Wildfire Season
Here come the extreme heat waves, as the US is bracing for another hot, dry and hectic wildfire season. Meanwhile, federal fire crews are growing concerned that a series of changes brought on by the Trump administration have left them underprepared. (Of course.) Via the Guardian:
Severe cuts to budgets and staff have hamstrung the agencies that manage roughly 640m acres of the nation’s public lands, leaving significant gaps in a workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression. The administration’s crackdown on climate science and the dismantling of departments that provided world-class research and weather forecasting, may also undermine early warning systems, slowing response and strategic planning.
[...] There are also fears that Trump’s new wildfire directive to bring the country’s federal firefighters together under a new agency will be rushed, adding another layer of uncertainty and chaos just as crews are trying to prepare for another grueling season.
[...] “If this turns out to be a major fire year, it’s going to be a shit show,” said Dr Hugh Safford, a fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, who spent more than two decades working for the US Forest Service (USFS) before retiring in 2021.