Scorched Lungs!

Twenty-first century megafires have become the new normal in many places, including across the American West. According to figures provided by the National Interagency Fire Center, an average of well over six million acres of wildlands have burned every year over the last decade, and with unabated high emissions of greenhouse gases, theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that the risk of very large wildfires could increase by up to six-fold by mid-century. 

This year alone, more than 51,500 wildfires erupted across the United States. Even into October, over a dozen large fires along the West Coast are still classified as “uncontained” and thousands of wildland firefighters remain on the frontlines of those conflagrations, working in grueling conditions.

But here’s an additional piece of the story: according to an Associated Press report published earlier this year, the U.S. Forest Service has seen a 45% attrition rate of its firefighting workforce over recent years. This alarming statistic – coupled with a jumble of recent Trump-era policies that have led to shrinking federal dollars for firefighting mitigation projects, slow-downs of personnel hiring and support programs, and the additional chilling effect of enabling ICE raids at firefighting camps – means that there are fewer people working longer hours on those frontlines. 

And here’s the final twist of the knife: those firefighting heroes who remain are being subjected to potentially catastrophic long-term effects that are only beginning to be recognized. At an issues forum convened last month by Democrats serving on the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, a panel of experts pointed out how current policies and practices at the federal level have failed to protect wildland firefighters from serious health consequences linked to their work.

Speakers with frontline experience included Isaac Karuzas, a former smoke jumper and hot shot from Montana, and retired Southern California wildland firefighter Matthew Brossard, who now works for the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Researchers also participated on the panel. Dr. Matt Rahn is the executive director of the Sacramento-based Wildfire Conservancy, which has partnered with the University of Arizona and CAL FIRE in assessing exposure risk and promoting interventions to reduce the risk of cancer for wildland firefighters. This effort is called the National Fire Fighter Cancer Cohort Study, and it is being led by another speaker on the panel. As well as being the director of that study, Dr. Jeff Burgess is also a medical doctor and professor at the University of Arizona. And attorney Christopher J. Godfrey, currently a D.C.-based advocate with the Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group, previously worked on improving wildland firefighter protections in the Department of Labor during the Biden Administration. 

Chairing the September 17th panel was Congresswoman Maxine Dexter, who worked for many years as a pulmonologist and critical care physician in her home state of Oregon before seeking elected office. In her opening remarks, Dexter referred to a study that found wildland firefighters, compared to the general population, had a 30% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, and a 43% increased risk of death from lung cancer. She asked the panelists to share their firsthand knowledge regarding irreversible long-term impacts to the health of the men and women who have had careers in fighting wildland fires.

Karuzas testified to the toll that years of fighting wildfires had taken on his body, from multiple broken bones, second- and third-degree burns, injuries requiring a total hip replacement, cataracts due to prescribed steroid use, and now pulmonary disease.

Once an elite smoke jumper who ran eight to ten miles a day to stay in shape, Karuzas said he now struggles to operate at 65% lung capacity. At 50 years old, he said he feels like a 90-year-old man. 

“I have come to terms… that my life expectancy has diminished,” he said, “but it’s not over for me. I have plenty of fight left and I’ve found purpose in advocacy for other firefighters. It’s not too late to protect many of our brave young men and women.”

Rahn pointed out that unlike structural firefighters, who work in cities and towns, wildland firefighters are not required to wear respiratory devices.

“Advances in decontamination and respiratory protection began in the 1970s with our structural firefighters and our municipal departments,” Rahn said. “However, there has been a long-term myth that fighting in the wildland was less dangerous because it was vegetation-based smoke. This is just simply untrue. Smoke is bad regardless of what kind of smoke it is.”

Yet there has been no urgency to develop wildland-compliant respirators that could meet current regulatory standards.

“Agencies could not require what did not exist, leaving us to protect firefighters with a cloth bandana and a prayer,” Rahn said.

That does virtually nothing to screen out the multiple toxic compounds and particulates in wildfire smoke that infiltrate the lungs and then move throughout the rest of the body.

And Rahn noted that the risks don’t stop there. The body gear that wildland firefighters wear is designed for heat risk, not dermal exposures – allowing some nasty toxins to seep in through skin contact, as well. Wildland firefighters often work for 24 hours or longer wearing the same gear and sleeping on the ground, with little opportunity to grab a shower or do laundry.

“Make no mistake,” Rahn warned, “these incidents are 9/11-scale exposure incidents for those first responders.”

He urged Congress to fund rapid competitive federal programs that would accelerate research and development field trials and certification for better protective firefighting gear – and to pair that with a federal purchasing commitment once compliant masks and PPE garments become available.

Rahn also pointed out that while some safety measures are being initiated at state levels, there should be development of protocols at the federal level for deployment of new personal protection garments, decontamination of firefighting gear, and “clean cab” standards for fire engines.

Many of Rahn’s suggestions were developed in conjunction with the Wildfire Conservancy’s partnership with the National Fire Fighter Cancer Cohort Study, and as director of that study, Dr. Jeff Burgess chimed in with some additional details. Founded during Barack Obama’s presidency with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Study aims to aggregate data on firefighter health, exposure and cancer risk over 30 years. Currently over 8,000 firefighters from 32 states across the country are enrolled in the study. Seven hundred of these participants are wildland firefighters, and an additional 700 are firefighters who have responded to wildland/urban interface fires.

Burgess noted that respirator protection for wildland firefighters is common around the world. 

Yet it was only last month, after a series of stories in The New York Times, followed up by Congressional pressure, that the U.S. Forest Service stepped forward to announce that it is partially reversing a decades-long ban on wearing masks. The agency’s policy now allows N95 mask-wearing during the performance of light duties. But the ban remains in place when firefighters engage in activities that require extreme exertion, because of concerns about overheating.

Like Rahn, Burgess said that many additional interventions could be adopted to ensure further protections of firefighters’ health, adding that it was important to involve wildland firefighters in planning how to protect their health. “They know best what would work for them.”

Speaking as a former wildland firefighter himself, and as a current representative of the union that represents a majority of federal wildland firefighters, Matthew Brossard agreed that firefighter safety is “deeply personal” and added, “the truth is, this work takes a tremendous physical and mental toll.”

Beyond the cancers, chronic respiratory illness, and cardiac conditions that he and his colleagues have suffered, Brossard said he has also seen too many instances of PTSD and suicide.

“These are not isolated incidents,” he warned. “They are part of a growing, undeniable pattern…. Yet when our firefighters return home from the fire line, often broken in body or spirit, they are too often met with bureaucracy instead of care.”  

Brossard said that oftentimes firefighters who are suffering from injuries and other harmful health conditions that resulted from the job they were hired to do have had to rely on charities and GoFundMe campaigns to raise the money for the care they need.

“It is despicable how our firefighters are treated,” he said, “and it’s a failure of leadership in the agencies at all levels.” 

But Karuzas, the Montana smoke jumper, interjected with a qualifier on behalf of one of those bureaucrats, who was the final member of the panel to speak. 

“I really appreciate the work that Chris Godfrey has done,” Karuzas said. “As a firefighter, I've watched things change. It was like night and day when he was in there and now I'm watching it slide back.”

Godfrey served as the Director of the Office of Workers Compensation Program at the Department of Labor during the Biden administration, and during his time there worked to address the systemic problems that uniquely impacted injured and ill firefighters. 

Godfrey brought in a “transformation officer” who was dedicated to learning the problems first responders faced, then instituting reforms. Enrollment requirements were streamlined. A special claims handling unit was created to prevent the delays that invariably seemed to occur when wildland firefighters’ claims went through the standard claims procedure and were held up by adjusters scrutinizing – and rejecting – the specialty costs that didn’t jibe with garden-variety medical care. Instead, a specially-trained cadre of adjusters learned how to understand the unique costs that cropped up when firefighters suffered traumatic injuries in the field, had to be extracted from perilous situations, and sometimes were transported across state lines to receive care at Trauma One or other specialty medical centers that were able to provide the best care.

Expedited responses regarding medically recommended treatments and surgeries resulted in better outcomes and, ultimately, lower medical costs. 

Godfrey said one of his proudest accomplishments during his time at the Department of Labor was seeing wildland firefighters’ claims acceptance rates that had been in the low 20s go up to over 90 percent.

“And some people didn't like that,” Godfrey said. “But… whether or not that claim was accepted, someone was going to bear the cost of it. And should someone like the brave men sitting here and their families be the ones that bear that cost or should the United States government? I think it's a pretty clear value judgment and speaks to who we are as a country. If we send these men and women into these harms, we have to pay for what the exposures cause.”

But with the arrival of a new administration this January, and extensive staff reductions conducted by DOGE, and later funding clawbacks, the pace of wildland firefighters’ claims approvals has once again slowed to a crawl.

Dexter ticked off the problems that had been identified by the panel: not enough recruitment of wildland firefighters, insufficient funding for research into protective gear and equipment, inadequate protocols for best safety practices on the frontlines and, on the backside, failure not only to understand the scope of the long-term harms associated with wildland firefighting, but also to assume responsibility for the costs of treating those harms. She said she would work with colleagues in Congress to bring forward an omnibus bill that would address those shortcomings. 

Barbara Lloyd McMichael is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest