Firefighters Are Hot Commodity This Season

Harry Croft looks for potential recruits to help fight this year’s wildfires. When he spots young, healthy prospects, he hands them a card.

“So you say you want to be a firefighter?” it asks.

Croft, the No. 2 man in charge of the Forest Service’s National Fire Plan, said he hasn’t seen a hiring spree like the one underway in his three decades with the agency. Between the Agriculture and Interior departments, they’ll employ about 21,400 firefighters, up from about 13,500 last year.

Although the growth is welcomed by Croft and other federal and state officials, it also demands creativity to find enough people willing--and able--to do the work.

Officials are turning to Australians and New Zealanders for help. They’ve brought in country music stars the Oak Ridge Boys for radio spots with Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton to attract recruits. They’re going to malls, nontraditional colleges and military installations.

“If you had talked to me on Aug. 1 and told me I was going to get a billion dollars . . . I would have bet you a bottle of Scotch that you were wrong,” Croft said.

The brisk effort to expand the firefighting force came after last year’s fire season ravaged more than 7 million acres--an area roughly the size of Maryland. This year may not be any better.

As part of the National Fire Plan, Congress allotted about $1.9 billion to the Forest Service last year and almost $980 million to the Interior Department to beef up firefighting capabilities, reduce wildfire fuels and clean up after last year’s fires.

Norton said agencies that handle wildfires--including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service--are doing well, but they need experienced supervisors.

“The Forest Service is hiring them. States are hiring them. We’re all competing for people that have experience,” she said.

If the interagency competition is a challenge, no one likes to talk about it. Even so, each agency is trying to get its own subtle edge, while teaming up with other government operations wherever possible.

For instance, Interior and the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service, are formalizing their relationships with Australia’s and New Zealand’s governments to share firefighters if one country’s season heats up.

Tim Hartzell, Interior’s national wildland fire coordinator, said he hopes relevant government departments can have an agreement to share firefighters by the end of the month. Last year, about 80 imported firefighters from the two countries helped out.

Norton said it just makes sense.

“Their fire season is the opposite time as ours,” she said. “They speak English. They are experienced in the same kinds of things, so we are trying to be very creative.”

But separately, Interior tried to woo some personnel with advertisements on over 5,000 radio stations starring Norton and the Oak Ridge Boys. Calls to the department’s hot line for applicants jumped from five calls to 45 or 50 calls a day after the ads ran.

Hartzell credits Norton, not the band. “She has got a really good voice and a good radio sense,” he said with a laugh.

The Interior Department agencies also went to military installations where folks were being discharged and offered employees who could retire financial perks to stay.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service took firefighters to the mall, dressed in their gear, looking for recruits. It has videos about joining an elite “hot shot” crew. They’ve run their own radio ads in English and Spanish.

And everyone has gone to job fairs.

By most counts, as of last month, the efforts have worked. The Agriculture Department has filled about 90% of the jobs, according to officials. Hartzell said the Interior Department hired more than 80% of its goal.

But the agencies are still hurting in some rural areas. Forest Service human resources officials say it’s much easier to attract people to the West Coast than Idaho.

Also, although more senior agency employees like Croft are used to moving around every two years, the new generation of hires aren’t.

“They don’t want to move to Timbuktu for a pay grade or two,” Croft said.

These new hires often require more training as well. Whereas firefighters used to come from communities with close ties to the land, many are coming from the East and more urban areas. Some haven’t run a chain saw or had the working-in-the-woods background.

“You can’t assume they know their way around. You can say go over that ridge, and the kid says, ‘What ridge?’ ” Croft said. “People that wanted to be in the woods didn’t mind sleeping in the dirt. A lot of that has changed.”

But he still says the immediate future looks good. Croft is more worried about whether the funding will be there a few years down the road, after a lighter fire season. In five to 10 years, he’s also concerned about an expected exodus of retirees.

“I’m resting comfortably” at night, he said. “But I don’t want this to be a one-time effort.”