Officials Bemoan Thinning Ranks of People Interested in Fighting Forest Fires

David Winne has a business degree and a teaching certificate, but last week he slept in center field on a dusty baseball diamond after 16-hour shifts fighting a Colorado wildfire.

Winne and his 20-man crew are among what officials said is a dwindling number of people who are choosing firefighting as a summer job or as part of a government career.

“Nationally, in the wildlife fire community, we’ve been experiencing shortages in all types of personnel,” said Karen Miranda Gleason, a spokeswoman for the interagency team that led the fight against the Hi Meadow fire southwest of Denver.

“This is something that’s been getting a little worse every year, and we’re certainly seeing it this year,” Gleason said last week, as 1,600 firefighters struggled against two big fires on Colorado’s Front Range.

Officials stressed that they had enough resources to fight the Colorado fires, and both blazes were contained this week after burning dozens of homes and about 21,000 acres.

But federal firefighting authorities said personnel shortages could spell trouble if bone-dry conditions across much of the West spark major blazes in several areas simultaneously.

“The problem we get into is when we get multiple areas of the country burning at the same time, we don’t have enough resources to go around,” said Ron Dunton, acting deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management’s Fire and Aviation Program at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Authorities say the nation’s booming economy and the advent of Native American gambling have lured young people away from seasonal work in firefighting.

But Dunton and others said the biggest problem is a shortage of employees in federal agencies--the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs--who know how to fight fires and are ready to help lead firefighting efforts when blazes break out.

Officials blame a shift in priorities among both aging employees and younger recruits in the agencies.

“It’s just a cultural thing right now,” said Jim Krugman, who was deputy incident commander on the Hi Meadow fire. “Firefighting used to be very much a part of the value system for the Forest Service, BLM and Park Service folks. With societal values right now, it’s just not the same as it used to be.”

Dave Steinke, a fire spokesman with the Forest Service in Denver, agreed. “A lot of the work force does not have that bond with the land” that was common when he joined 22 years ago, he said. New employees are more likely to work in information technology and communications, for example.

The average age in the Forest Service has risen by eight or nine years in the last decade or so and is now 46, he said, and some of the most experienced firefighters have retired.

“We don’t have a lot of young people coming up learning that, so we have to be very constructive about how we staff and maintain our firefighting force,” Steinke said.

Unlike in the past, many employees now are dual-career or single parents who cannot leave home for weeks at a time to fight fires. Others may not want to.

“As you get older, you start to look at life a little differently,” Krugman said. “Sleeping on the ground is not as much fun.”

For Winne, 36, it’s part of the attraction.

“This job is not just for anyone who wants a job. You have to really enjoy doing the work, because there are no perks, really, except being outside and getting a good adrenaline rush,” he said.

The rush swept Winne into a firefighting career.

After graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno, with a degree in business administration, he worked for Hilton Hotels for a year. He then went back to school for his teaching certificate and taught high school history for a year.

“That still didn’t give me the adrenaline rush I needed,” he said, so he started fighting fires during the hot Western summers. With 10 seasons under his instrument-laden belt, Winne is superintendent of the Vegas 777 Handcrew, a Park Service team based in Boulder City, Nev.

“I have a college degree and I’ve worn the suit and tie, but this is what I love to do,” he said last week, as his crew mates prepared to bed down on the ball field with a bright moon and a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call looming over them.

Winne’s crew is made up mostly of students and others like him, who spend summers fighting fires and winters traveling or working at ski resorts. But as employers battle for workers in a booming economy, he said, fewer people are settling for such backbreaking work.

“The job market’s tight, and when you look at seasonal employment, there are a lot better jobs out there that offer benefits, that pay more per hour, that get you home every night and give you weekends off,” Winne said.

For those who can do without the adrenaline rush, he said, there’s always the great American summer-job standby: fast food.

“We have that as our complaint form--a McDonald’s application,” he said. “You got any complaints, go see McDonald’s.”