The prolonged drought in the West is also fueling the fires, just one of the ways climate change is compounding the crisis. They are asking the Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government to include it in the 2022 funding bill, according to the letter.Įxperts fear another terrible wildfire season – possibly worse than 2020, the most active fire season that California has ever recorded. On Wednesday, Senators Feinstein and Alex Padilla of California, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Steve Daines of Montana wrote a letter proposing a plan to raise federal firefighter pay. “State, local and private entities can range from $70,000 to $88,000 a year, and their benefits are better,” she said. The United States Forest Service pays $38,000.”ĭuring the hearing, US Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen confirmed the average yearly pay for a US Forest Service firefighter is $38,000. “State pay is $70,000, that’s what Cal Fire pays to a state firefighter. “We have 19 million acres under federal jurisdiction,” Feinstein said in the May 26 hearing on Capitol Hill. Dianne Feinstein pressed the US Forest Service in a May hearing on how it can stop losing hotshots to other places offering bigger salaries. He estimates they are missing hotshots in 35 key positions this summer in California.Ĭalifornia Sen. “I know of three or four forests that are down staffed.” The Eldorado Hotshots medevac one of their own as Hump walks behind them during the New York Peak Fire in Nevada in 2006. He called it the “best job in the world.”Īfter 25 years, Hump says he became just the latest mentally fried, underpaid hotshot veteran to leave, at a time when California wildfires are at their worst. Hump rose up from a seasonal rookie firefighter to the prestigious position of supervisor of the Eldorado Hotshots.

Hotshot crews of 20 to 22 people spearhead fire attacks, and it’s not uncommon for them to hike 10 miles daily with fire gear packs that can weigh up to 45 pounds. “Hump,” as fellow firefighters and friends call him, supervised hotshot crews from the US Forest Service on blister-inducing hikes to dig out fire lines, hack down trees and set blazes to fight advancing flames. “You are in a fog and expecting death or disaster around every corner … It collectively killed my hotshot spirit,” Humphrey, 44, said of the fire tornado. He says that terrifying moment forever changed his outlook. The fire tornado, which obliterated entire neighborhoods in Redding, California, during the massive Carr Fire, still haunts former hotshot supervisor Aaron Humphrey. A swirling tornado of flames reaching 40,000 feet into the sky tore through a California city in 2018, leaving a veteran hotshot firefighter horrified.

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