After Record-Low Snowpack, West A "Tinderbox" - And Shitstain's Cuts To Fire Funding Aren't Helping

As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than 16,000 buildings were destroyed by wildfires roaring into residential neighborhoods, many wildland firefighters look back on the rest of last year as a dodged bullet. Across the nation, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates the federal wildfire response, the total area burned in 2025 was about two-thirds of the average over the past 10 years.

This year is shaping up to be a very different prospect, wildfire experts warn. Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mountains that will offer little relief as its remnants melt away. At the same time, upheaval in the federal wildland firefighting effort and the loss of many staff qualified to join wildfire incident teams since Donald Trump took power for the second time have left firefighters deeply concerned about their ability to mount an effective response. “I think this is going to be the year,” warned Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “The conditions are just ripe for some really bad outcomes.”

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In September, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to unite his department’s programs into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The Forest Service, which would lose a large part of its funding if its firefighting programs were merged into the new Interior agency, is promising to coordinate while retaining its independent workforce. Forcing consolidation across the Interior Department and the Forest Service would in any case likely require approval from Congress, which has shown little enthusiasm for the Trump administration’s plans and did not appropriate funds for Interior’s Wildland Fire Service for the 2026 fiscal year. Burgum’s previous efforts to centralize power at Interior drew complaints about the organizational chaos that followed: Some 5,000 staff were moved from the department’s component agencies to his office in May 2025, and almost 1,800 quit, retired or were pushed out afterward. That’s sparked concern about how smooth his overhaul of the department’s firefighting efforts will be.

Data on the number of red-carded staff is not publicly available, but as of the end of March the Department of the Interior had lost about 17 percent of its total staff during the second Trump administration, while the Forest Service had lost almost 11 percent, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data. This loss of staff may help explain why the Forest Service treated roughly 35 percent fewer acres across the nation last year with prescribed fires, forest thinning and brush clearing to reduce hazardous fuels than in 2024, leaving communities “more exposed to the risk of catastrophic wildfire,” according to an analysis from the Center for Western Priorities in Denver.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31052026/experts-warn-of-upcoming-wildfire-season/