I cut line for the forest service for a couple years out of highschool and I have many friends still in it. Appalling situation. The pay is insultingly low, something on the order of 18 an hour (for California oregon and Washington) hiring irregular so almost no benefits, more and more people working for these cancerous private contractors with even worse pay and sketchier gear.
And the tasks we get thrown into are frequently borderline impossible. The west is going to burn, and that’s ok. Attempting a policy of general suppression is virtually impossible. Even Attempting to minimize damage to property is an absurd task in a world with almost no actual hardening of the wildland urban interface and commercial logging. Many people in operations understand fire behavior and ecology, and they are handcuffed by what officials and the public want. There are groups in the industry pushing for saner policy and in many cases yhey struggle to gain traction. That combined with the terrible pay causes mass burnout. They burn through people absurdly fast as a result, and those of us with any good way out tend to take it.
I cut line for the forest service for a couple years out of highschool and I have many friends still in it. Appalling situation. The pay is insultingly low, something on the order of 18 an hour (for California oregon and Washington) hiring irregular so almost no benefits, more and more people working for these cancerous private contractors with even worse pay and sketchier gear.
And the tasks we get thrown into are frequently borderline impossible. The west is going to burn, and that’s ok. Attempting a policy of general suppression is virtually impossible. Even Attempting to minimize damage to property is an absurd task in a world with almost no actual hardening of the wildland urban interface and commercial logging. Many people in operations understand fire behavior and ecology, and they are handcuffed by what officials and the public want. There are groups in the industry pushing for saner policy and in many cases yhey struggle to gain traction. That combined with the terrible pay causes mass burnout. They burn through people absurdly fast as a result, and those of us with any good way out tend to take it.