Trump administration policy is slowing the very fire prevention work he endorsed, critics say
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- Firefighter unions and dozens of Democrats in Congress have condemned the Trump administration’s hold on contracts, saying it has delayed firefighter hiring.
- Administration officials say they are trying to make sure that spending approved under Biden comply with Trump’s executive orders.
President Trump has insisted that “raking” of the forests and other fuel reduction measures would help prevent wildfires from devastating the West. But early actions by his administration have frozen one of the key programs to complete that sort of work, weeks after a pair of giant fires devastated broad stretches of Altadena and Pacific Palisades.
The administration’s block on some Bureau of Land Management contracts comes at the same time that it has frozen most federal government hiring — an action that has led to confusion at the U.S. Forest Service, where the hiring of some firefighters has been postponed.
A White House spokesperson said the Department of Interior, which oversees the BLM, is reviewing funding decisions to ensure they are consistent with Trump’s executive orders. That review is focusing, in part, on spending approved under President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
A pair of firefighter unions and dozens of Democrats in Congress have condemned the Trump administration’s hold on the contracts and the hiring delay, saying the actions defy common sense and Trump’s own admonitions about the way to reduce the threat of wildfires.
California’s two U.S. senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, joined a dozen other Western senators in demanding that the BLM lift its hold on the wildland “treatment” contracts that pay private companies to remove brush and trees in fire-prone areas.
Fifty-seven House members — including Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Scott Peters (D-San Diego) — joined in demanding restoration of the fire prevention work and resumption of hiring of firefighters by the chronically understaffed Forest Service.
“It’s a slap in the face. It’s completely disrespectful,” Steve Gutierrez of the National Federation of Federal Employees, the union representing firefighters, said of the administration actions, noting that the onboarding of some firefighters last week was stopped because of the hiring freeze. “Do they not care about the work we are doing? Does the government not have my back?”
The fires will have a deep and lasting impact on construction, entertainment, retail and other sectors of the Los Angeles economy while creating a construction boom.
Brian K. Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters union, also expressed dismay, noting that nearly half of the state is federal land, including “some of the wildest, most burnable areas of our state.”
“President Trump has acknowledged very recently that vegetation management is a major driver in the prevention of devastating firestorms, so it’s disappointing to see his orders to stop work on fuel reduction, as well as the hiring freeze,” added Rice, whose organization represents 35,000 firefighters and emergency medical workers. “The consequences are well within everyone’s imagination after the destruction experienced in Los Angeles County since the New Year.”
In an interview with the Associated Press, a White House spokesperson downplayed the impact of the actions.
“Just because there’s a review doesn’t mean there’s not a desire for this work to get done,” said Harrison Fields, a deputy press secretary in the White House. “Proper oversight of the dollars is just as important as ensuring that California gets restored.”
Fields also said that “there has been no bigger advocate for restoring California to its natural beauty than President Trump, which is why he made it a point to visit the region in his first week in office and he’s continuing to put tremendous pressure on state and local government to reduce the barriers in restoring the area.”
McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson for the federal Office of Personnel Management, said firefighters are exempt from the hiring freeze because they are public safety workers. A White House spokesperson said the administration will “hire key positions that will continue to protect public and tribal lands, infrastructure, and communities from the impacts of wildfires through hazardous fuels management, wildfire preparedness, and close collaboration with interagency partners.”
But Gutierrez, of the federal employees union, said he had been told that one group of workers scheduled to start Sunday was informed their onboarding had been put on hold.
The firefighter representatives worried that any hiccup in hiring would exacerbate long-running difficulties in recruiting employees to the U.S. agency. Federal firefighters generally receive much lower pay than those working for state and municipal agencies. Captains, engine bosses and others have been part of a mass exodus in recent years.
With the attrition rate for Forest Service firefighters at 45% over the past four years, the Democratic senators urged the Trump administration to clarify the situation quickly, “rather than place more uncertainty within it through an arbitrary freeze.”
The critical need to reduce fuel in western mountains and hills has been agreed upon by wildfire experts and elected officials of both major parties.
Congress set aside more than $3 billion from the infrastructure and inflation reduction legislation for the work, which can be as varied as setting controlled burns, deploying goats to eat vegetation or having crews hand-cut brush and trees.
One firm doing such work in Northern California, Oregon and Idaho told the Associated Press it had stopped work funded by the Biden legislation and laid off 15 full-time employees.
“It just doesn’t make good business sense to keep operating, not knowing if we’re going to get paid or if at some point the administration is going to rescind some of this,” said Marko Bey, executive director of the Lomakatsi Restoration Project. He called it a “really challenging situation.”
The California senators laid out the case for the work in their letter. It said, in part: “These fuels reduction projects save lives and property, reduce the danger to firefighters, and return our lands to a fire-adapted ecosystem that can better withstand the threat to human life, communities, infrastructure, and property.”
Some Malibu homeowners remain tangled in bureaucracy six years after the Woolsey fire. After the recent Palisades fire, they’re worried they’re going to be left further behind.
During his first term as president and since retaking office last month, Trump has blamed California leaders for the devastating wildfires. After the 2018 Camp fire destroyed most of Paradise, Calif., Trump called for more “raking” of the forest floor to prevent future fires.
After this year’s Southern California fires, Trump made another claim broadly debunked by fire safety experts — that firefighters had insufficient water to douse the blazes in Altadena and the Palisades because the state’s environmental policies had wasted water.
Experts said that no system has ever been designed to fight massive firestorms that forge into suburban neighborhoods and that no system could maintain pressure with nearly every garden hose and fire hydrant open at the same time.
In their letter to Trump administration officials, the House members said: “Without urgent corrective action from this administration, we will be less safe, less prepared, and more vulnerable to extreme wildfire threats.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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