Kevin Mecham: An open letter from a Forest Service Firefighter

May 16, 2019 – My name is Kevin Mecham and I am a Captain on the Truckee Hotshots. I am writing this letter to provoke a larger discussion about wildfires and the Federal Employees whose lives are defined by them. I started fighting fire with the US Forest Service when I was 19. I was enrolled in a Natural Resources program and was aiming to have a career that was meaningful, conservation oriented, adventurous, in the great outdoors and contributed to something bigger than myself. I attended an employment outreach seminar where a Forest Service Firefighter spoke and I thought to myself “that sounds great, I’ll be outside, it sounds noble and it’ll be an adventure.” I didn’t know a single Firefighter. The thought of being a Firefighter had never crossed my mind; in fact when I was 12 my family almost lost our home in a wildfire and I remember driving through the flames with my Mom to escape and I was terrified. But, seven years later and I had become a passion driven, adventure seeking 19 year old and it sounded great.

15 fire seasons later a lot has changed. I am a husband, a father and my perception of the world has changed. Wildfires themselves have changed; size, severity and frequency have all increased . My career still parallels what I anticipated as a college student seeking a meaningful career. I am outside a lot, it is noble and it is definitely an adventure. I’ve worked on Engines, a Helitack module and two Hotshots Crews. It was Hotshoting that really resonated with me. I have enough pride and emotion about being a Hotshot that I could write more than anyone would ever want to read so I’ll keep it short. Just know that I have a lot of heart and a ton of pride in the people and places that developed me into the person that I am. But a lot has changed and what my younger self failed to foresee was the weight of the psychological toll of this profession and how unnecessarily exasperated it is by the Agency. Some of the psychological weight is part of the job. We work in the woods and the woods are an inherently dangerous place. Introduce fire, increased fuel loading, wilder deviations from weather norms, an ever-expanding reach of the wild land urban interface, more state and local government working with a scale of fire and an environment they are unfamiliar with, and we find ourselves in very dynamic and complex situations. But the single most vexing and compounding factor is that we are a conservation agency ran by politicians and science based academics that just happen to oversee the most effective and comprehensive wild land firefighting force in the world.

The catalyst of this letter is the line of duty death of friend and co-worker Daniel Laird and the WO and RO’s management of its Forestry Technicians. Our current management structure and its subsequent repercussions on our Firefighting workforce are not new problems. Line of Duty deaths are not new problems. But Dan’s death and the Agency’s structure have shone a glaring light on the implications of our current leadership organization. As these tragedies and issues hit closer and closer to home for the “boots on the ground” it makes the weight feel even heavier. The loss of Dan and the Agency’s proposed attempts at solving our problems: hiring/ staffing, retention, fatigue management, work life balance and the aborted uniform t-shirt mandate illustrate our greatest obstacles. We are being managed by people that don’t have experience in our profession. There isn’t the necessary context to the commitment and sacrifice required to prepare for and work a tough fire season. Incident complexity has increased and demand has increased. When will the Agency embrace what we do on a daily basis? When will the Agency recognize what the public already expects of us? We invented wildland firefighting and yet the individuals making the decisions that impact us the gravest have never done our job. We have leadership attempting to manage fatigue when they don’t understand the complexities of our fatigue. I wouldn’t supervise a botany crew. I wouldn’t oversee a multi-million dollar budget. Ancient hunters wouldn’t select a gatherer to lead a hunt. How can we expect to succeed if we have people supervising in facets in which they have no experience? This is an illogical structure that would universally fail across all spectrums of humanity throughout time.

In the spring of 2017 at the Wildland Fire Training Center Randy Moore and two widely respected former Hotshot Superintendents addressed a group of 100 plus Wildland Fire Apprentices. They had been invited as guest speakers to build passion and spur pride in the Apprentices for the career path they had recently chosen. The speakers were there to create enthusiasm and to fortify duty, respect and integrity. The two former Superintendents spoke from the heart and gave blood pumping speeches that were teeming with energy, pride and nostalgia for a job they loved so much. Speeches from leaders carry weight. Their actions matter. Leaders are constantly being judged and evaluated. That’s part of the role. They set the tempo, they build the culture, and they are responsible for their followers conduct and performance. How one carries themselves and the message they deliver have effects.

When Randy Moore addresses a room full of Apprentices and informs them they should identify as Forest Service employees and not as Firefighters it has a negative impact. As the implications of this statement rippled throughout the fire community it was perceived as another hit to morale. It was an inclusionary statement that had the opposite effect on Firefighters. The risk, exposure, liability and commitment accepted by Firefighters is not the same as employees of other departments and cannot be lumped under the broad Forest Service umbrella without acknowledgement. The deliberate approach to steer away from the classification of Firefighter is hard to swallow. And for the young, impressionable, passionate men and women who just accepted their first permanent job on a wild land fire engine or an lnteragency Hotshot Crew that were in attendance, they could feel the air being sucked out of the room. The entire ambiance was said to have shifted and the mood plummeted. This is wrong. They were at the WILDLAND FIRE Training Center. He was addressing Apprentices in the WILDLAND FIRE Apprenticeship Program, they work on WILD LAND FIRE engines and HOTSHOT crews. Their positions meet the WO’s definition of an lnteragency Fire Program Management position. How does this happen? We would be proud to identify as Forest Service Firefighters; we already are.

Currently an individual is only identified as a Firefighter after a Line of Duty death. How is this acceptable? To the ground level resources it doesn’t equate. We fight fire year round. Our surplus time is spent preparing for the upcoming fire season. We have Firefighter retirement. All signs point to Firefighters. And it’s morally and ethically wrong to have a position title only in death. At Dan’s memorial, Chief Vicki Christiansen called Dan a Firefighter. And every time a Forestry Technician dies we receive an email from the Regional and Washington office stating something to the effect of: “It is with a heavy heart that I must share with you the passing of Forest Service firefighter Daniel Jacob Laird … ” (Secretary Sonny). Sonny you forgot to capitalize Firefighter. Intentional or accidental it has an effect. It illustrates the decade’s long struggle for Firefighter classification and feels like a belittlement of our commitment and effort.

There are 17 Wild land Firefighter line of duty deaths each year. Attending memorials and paying tributes of respect is becoming common place for us. There aren’t many professions that experience death at those rates. And Forestry Technicians shouldn’t be one of them. But as Firefighters we have accepted our reality. If we didn’t attend the formal memorial we probably observed a moment of silence for the fallen at an IMT’s operational briefing before our next shift on a dark smoky morning. And then we went to work. We went back to the fire line. Often performing the same exact role as the deceased. Have you experienced that? Have you tried to dissect that dichotomy and articulate it to a group of young seasonal Forestry Technicians you are about to lead into a fire fight? It is impossible to extrapolate the psychological burden of this load. But we carry the weight and we carry on. All fire season long we work ourselves past complete mental and physical exhaustion. That is what fire season demands of us. And many of us are people of high moral standing and can’t stomach the thought of sitting idle while people’s lives and homes are burning. We do the job because we have pride in it. Because somebody has to do it. Because not everyone can do it. Someone has to accept the risk. But why for an agency that doesn’t understand and genuinely appreciate its workforce? Or at the least have people in positions that know what it feels like to lose a friend to the “job”. Or what it takes to spend a 100 days a year on the fireline, breathing smoke, dodging falling burning trees, rolling boulders, working with aircraft, driving dangerous roads and sleeping in the dirt. Leaders that can advocate for us.

When do we face our real challenges? When do we stop pretending to be a zero fatality organization? When do we solve staffing, retention, Firefighter classification, pay and morale? People are willing to make sacrifices when they feel good about what they do, but right now not many do. I’m not complaining, this is the career I have chosen. I’m taking the loss of Dan Laird and the Forestry Technicians that have died before him as an opportunity to provide some insight into our lives. Having leadership and supervision that doesn’t recognize the shortcoming of the Agency and doesn’t acknowledge the hardships of the job is brutal. Despite the personal sacrifice at the expense of our families and our long term health we choose to eke out a living as Forestry Technicians because we believe in what we do and how we do it. But it is getting harder every day. In a time when we need to be increasing scope and scale we’re watching our workforce be dismantled.

As fire seasons get longer, more devastating, more complex and more dynamic we are eroding. We have unprecedented staffing and retention problems. The root of these problems need to be accepted, understood and mitigated. We invest incalculable amounts of money and time into training individuals who inevitably leave the agency because of the pay and schedule. Case in point the Wild land Firefighter Apprenticeship Program. This program is currently our sole pipeline to filling our entry level permanent vacancies and it is completely failing to meet our staffing needs. Where are all of the Apprentices going? We can’t attract higher caliber individuals because of the pay and schedule. If the Agency is worried about fatigue, solve our staffing and retention problems. It isn’t about restricting our hours, it’s about providing us with the tools to do our jobs and the staffing ability to take a day off. We need to be classified by what we do, we are Firefighters. We need to be paid commensurate with our cooperators if we are going to continue to work shoulder to shoulder with them on the fireline. We need to change our hiring practices and correct our hiring delays. We need to be able to staff our modules with quality folks.

I’m still proud of what I do. I’m proud of where I come from. I still put my best foot forward. I still lead by example. I try and only express these views to people that I should both up and down the chain of command. I do not want crewmembers that are bogged down by bureaucratic issues. I want engaged individuals enjoying the job: being in the woods, developing character, building relationships and solving problems in the adverse conditions of one of the most humbling forces of nature. I also never wanted to be perceived as a complainer. My hope isn’t to ruffle feathers it’s to incite change. Countless Case Studies and Lessons Learned have found that we are a “can do” culture. We have silently and diligently “can do’ed” ourselves into a corner. We work harder, longer, for less and our workforce is finally showing signs of attrition.

Federal Firefighting has become a stepping stone for most. We are the place to get wildland fire experience and the state, local government and private sector knows it. Municipal departments that are dealing with more wild land fire know it, Cal Fire knows it, Pacific Gas and Electric knows it and they are all actively hiring our employees. But municipal departments aren’t going to absorb our jurisdictions. Cal Fire isn’t going to fight fire in our wildernesses. PG&E isn’t leaving their power lines. Even with monumental DPA restructuring we still have land to protect. No one fights more fire than us. We develop, we train and we are inevitably losing our employees. The talent has largely been cut out of our workforce. The quality of our Wild land Fire modules is weaker and more diluted than it has ever been. Where will we be when the next faction jumps off the ship? Our safety, efficiency and production are certainly not going to look the same.

I wrote this letter because I care; to provide a voice from those on the ground that don’t complain. That show up every day and put their best foot forward. The contingent that soldiers along making it work. The hardworking Firefighters moonlighting as: Administrative Staff, Hiring Officials, HR Specialists, Fuels Officers, GIS consultants, Timber Fallers, Personal Trainers … The group that doesn’t whine. The group that doesn’t complain. The group that needs representation. The group whose workloads dictate their heads being down because they know fire season is coming and they’re doing everything in their power to prepare their modules and themselves. The men and women who don’t have the time or resources to fix the problems inhibiting us from being the Firefighting force we need to be . Our Agency is stacked with incredible people who put fourth incredible effort and take on incredible liability. But we are losing them. Federal Firefighters are willing to make the sacrifices required of the job. But we have to feel good about what we do. We need to know that we are supported. We need to know we have leaders that understand and appreciate our struggles. We need leaders that will tirelessly advocate for us and help us overcome our hurdles. The problems confronting the USFS Fire workforce are problems that will inevitably be felt by the public. With climate change, longer and more devastating fire seasons this issue holds relevance to all tax payers. The nation needs a well-managed elite wildland firefighting workforce.

Editor’s note: Glossary

WO – U.S. Forest Service Washington Office
RO – Regional Office (California is in Region 5, the Pacific Southwest Region)
Randy Moore – Regional Forester, Pacific Southwest Region
Secretary Sonny – Sonny Perdue, Secretary of U.S. Department of Agriculture
Chief Vicki Christiansen – Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
DPA – Direct Protection Area
IHC – Interagency Hotshot Crew
IMT – Incident Management Team