With budget chaos at both the federal and state levels, Washington’s wildfire season may present more risks than normal. Local officials say they will be adequately prepared, but there are reasons for concern.
In February, as part of broad cuts across all federal agencies, more than 2,000 U.S. Forest Service employees were fired – approximately 10 percent of the agency’s workforce. Unions representing the employees put the number closer to 3,400. Many of those employees recently returned to work after being reinstated by a civil service review board.
At the state level, legislators are piecing together a 2025-27 budget that also may include personnel reductions. Gov. Bob Ferguson has proposed mandatory cuts across all departments that could include firefighters from the Department of Natural Resources.
And locally, the roster of firefighters has been trimmed following the state’s closure of the Larch Corrections Center in October 2023.
For more than six decades, people incarcerated at the facility were trained to fight wildfires, providing quick response to blazes in Southwest Washington.
All of this threatens to reverse progress that has been made in responding to wildfires throughout the state. Under Hilary Franz, who led the Department of Natural Resources from 2017 until early this year, Washington increased funding and improved policies for suppressing fires before they could turn into conflagrations.
Now, there is concern about funding and coordination between responding agencies when time is of the essence.
As Chief Gordon Brooks of Clark County Fire District 10, which covers 84 square miles in rural north county, told The Columbian: “For us to go to the larger fires, we have to wait until we get a request from one of the land management agencies. We work through or for either DNR or the state fire marshal’s office.”
Dave Upthegrove, who was elected in November to succeed Franz as commissioner of public lands, is confident that coordination between state and federal officials will continue. “I’m very hopeful that the Forest Service is going to continue to be a really critical wildfire partner in all of this,” he told The (Everett) Herald. “There just are some changes that could mean we’re going to have to do some things differently or step up a little bit.”
But changes – and the delays they create – can be damaging. With firefighters and equipment deployed throughout the state and with an emphasis on quick responses, 93 percent of wildfires in Washington over the past three years have been contained to less than 10 acres.
That, however, is not a reason for complacency. Climate change has made forests more vulnerable to wildfires and has intensified the damage they cause. Last fall, more than 1 million acres and 1,700 structures were destroyed in a series of blazes in California. That devastation should draw lingering attention from federal and state officials.
As Upthegrove said: “These massive cuts to wildfire prevention and response increase the threat to public safety — putting lives and homes at greater risk. The cuts make Washington more likely to experience the kind of horrific scene we saw recently in Southern California.”
Like public health or food safety or any number of governmental initiatives, budget cuts can be costly in the long run when it comes to wildfires. We hope that Washington is prepared for this fire season, but we won’t be certain until it arrives.
