Wildfire season is months away in Washington, but planning efforts already have begun.
It is not going smoothly.
Local and state agencies told The News Tribune that federal funding freezes and layoffs have thrown a wrench into planning efforts and sown chaos at a crucial time, especially with the state seeing more severe and destructive fires.
A judge temporarily barred President Donald Trump’s efforts to freeze billions of congressionally approved funds this week. But Washington Department of Natural Resources communications manager Michael Kelly told The News Tribune on Thursday that tens of millions of dollars in federal grants the DNR expected to receive have been frozen for the past month and that it’s hard to know what funding will return or when.
Most of that money would be used at the local level to address forest health, wildfire preparation, wildfire resiliency and urban and community forestry, Kelly said. There’s so little information being shared with the DNR that its staff often learns about how they are affect from news reports, and information changes day-by-day or hour-by-hour, he said.
“We have a number of grants through the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law that have been caught up in the freeze of federal funding where we don’t know what’s available right now,” he told The News Tribune on Feb. 20. “We’re not given any information. The only way we do know some of these funds were frozen was when we went into the system and when the people who managed the system tried to withdraw funding, they couldn’t access the codes. We don’t know, is this temporary?”
The federal government also has been six to seven weeks behind in hiring its seasonal firefighters, according to the DNR’s federal partners, which means training is behind too, Kelly said.
“The last thing we need right now planning for wildfire season is uncertainty. The last thing our local partners need, our local fire districts and our community partners need, is uncertainty about whether that funding is going to be there or not. And then on top of that, when you look at the staff reductions that have come to the Forest Service, a lot of those people who were fired also fight fires,” Kelly said. “We will be prepared for wildfire season, but it’s causing us extra work and it’s causing us to have to go back and do all these plans. It’s really disruptive.”
Larry Moore, who spoke on behalf of the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, told The News Tribune on Feb. 19 that in an effort to be “good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy” the USDA “has made the difficult decision to release about 2,000 probationary, non-firefighting employees from the Forest Service.”
Moore would not answer questions from The News Tribune about how many employees, or which staff, in Washington were impacted.
Entering fire season ‘unnecessarily handicapped’
Fighting and preventing wildfires in Washington requires the joint effort and collaboration of federal, state, local and tribal fire districts, said Thomas Kyle-Milward, the wildfire communications manager for the state DNR. The federal government is the biggest partner for DNR and owns 43% of the public land in Washington and supplies about $30 million to the DNR in a given year, he said.
Money from the federal government goes towards community grants to train and purchase equipment for volunteer fire departments statewide, Kyle-Milward said. In the event of severe destructive fires, the federal government historically has stepped in to pay for the majority of damages through Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Fire Management Assistance Grants, although that has not been the case under Trump’s administrations, he said. Lately Washington has seen 10 to 20 major fires a year.
“There is a ton of uncertainty about the FMAG status right now because of the federal administration. I would point to California, the LA fires, as a pretty big indicator that we have no idea if we’re going to get the FMAG or not this summer,” Kyle-Milward said. “The fact that they’re doing stuff like freezing … dollars for wild land prevention work is also probably not a great sign.”
Robust partnerships with local fire districts in high-risk areas are essential to making sure fires don’t spread and structural damage is limited, he said.
Forest health practices to reduce the likelihood of wildfires include removing dead, dying or sick trees, controlled burns and managing the forest understory and shrubbery to reduce the available kindling for fires, Kyle-Milward said. The DNR also has programs like Wildfire Ready Neighbors to help homeowners and private citizens make their homes more resilient to wildfires.
Over the last six to eight years, DNR has worked to become more self-sufficient, fielding its own aircraft for wildfire-suppression efforts and securing a dedicated eight-year $500 million Wildfire Response, Forest Restoration and Community Resilience fund from the state with House Bill 1168 in 2021, Kyle-Milward said.
“I think what the situation in D.C. really underlines is that we need to continue being self-sufficient and perhaps become even more self-sufficient,” he said. “Our leaders are meeting with regional forestry leaders to discuss what a reduced federal response would look like [this spring]. I don’t think we know the answers to that.”
Delays in hiring of seasonal firefighters, due to federal funding freezes, likely will mean the federal government will not have the staff it needs this year, “which means they’re going to be going into the season unnecessarily handicapped,” Kyle-Milward said.
As previously reported by The News Tribune, this comes at a time when the state faces a budget crisis and shortfall of between $10 billion and $12 billion. Kelly said DNR is running into maintenance challenges with current staffing levels and doesn’t expect to hire more staff.
Climate change and changing weather patterns have resulted in more ignitions in Washington, especially in eastern Washington. It’s also resulted in a higher number of more destructive wildfires and more acres burned each year, Kyle-Milward said.
Although it’s too early to tell what this year’s fire season will look like (Kyle-Milward said the DNR is currently monitoring the rainfall and snow fall), the “new normal” is 300,000 acres of forest burned each year, he said. Peak burn season is July and August.
DNR will spend an estimated $221.3 million on wildfire suppression this year, up from $174.5 million in 2024 and $152.96 million in 2023, Kyle-Milward said.
East Pierce Fire & Rescue and Central Pierce Fire & Rescue said they would continue to monitor changes in federal funding and their impacts, but it’s too early to tell.
East Pierce Fire chief Jon Parkinson said via email that federal funding impacts “may impact all aspects of our services.”
“Changes in funding to any of our partners could result in negative impacts due to our collective reliance on each other,” Parkinson added.
Central Pierce Fire wildfire coordinator Jake Weigley told The News Tribune on Thursday most of its funding comes from taxpayers within the fire district, and “we very rarely, if ever, would fall into a scenario where we’re working directly for the federal government.”
Central Pierce Fire has not been impacted by the federal funding cuts and because of its larger size doesn’t qualify for wildfire operation grants from DNR, Weigley said. The organization services 20 fire stations in 178 square miles with a combined staff of 600, he said.
Weigley said he believes Central Pierce Fire has adequate staffing and funding this year, but if state staffing and funding is low, they might be “leaned upon a little harder to support fire response statewide.”
In recent years, Weigley said, he’s seen more wildfires in southern Spanaway and southern Graham where urban growth comes up against forest land and rural areas. Wildfires are weather dependent, he said. Another factor is the type and quantity of vegetation and fuel for the fire.
Over the past 20 years, it was typical to have one big fire that burned five to 10 acres. Last year the department fought six big fires, Weigley said.
“The general public believes western Washington — rain, always wet, not a lot of fire hazards. Most of the time that is true. But when we have the appropriate weather, like, we’ve had some really nice summers and that led into a really nice fall — those have a direct impact on our fuel, and we’ve definitely trended warmer and drier,” he said. “If you look back, any significant large fire is tied directly to a weather event.”
Kyle-Milward said wildfires can result in millions of dollars of destruction and recovery costs, displacement of families, negative health impacts from smoke inhalation, habitat loss, wildlife damage and the potential for more erosion and landslides with tree loss.
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