Trump’s federal hiring freeze halts onboarding of federal firefighting crews ahead of wildfire season

U.S. Forest Service firefighters monitor the Line Fire on September 9, 2024 in San Bernardino National Forest, California. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource)

The federal hiring freeze implemented by President Donald Trump has affected the hiring of a crucial group of federal workers: firefighters.

The freeze comes at a critical time, when fire departments across the country would typically onboard thousands of seasonal federal firefighters in preparation for wildfires in the spring and summer.

“It’s going to be really bad, really quick,” said Ben McLane, a federal hand crew captain and board member with Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

“We’re going to have a lack of personnel when fire season gets going,” McLane told CNN on Friday. “The precedent that we’ve seen over the last few decades at this point is making us pretty certain that it’s going to be a big fire season again.”

The federal hiring freeze, initiated through one of the executive orders the president signed on his first day in office, dictates that no new federal civilian positions can be created and no vacant positions can be filled.

Federal firefighters are an essential part of the nation’s firefighting capability. The Department of the Interior employed 5,780 federal wildland fire personnel in 2024, while the US Forest Service employed over 11,300.

Federal firefighters “respond to fires all over the nation and internationally,” according to McLane. “The federal government is the only resource that does that as fluidly and nimbly.”

The majority of firefighters employed by the federal government are seasonal, hired as either permanent or temporary employees, according to McLane. Each year, ahead of the summer fire season, these employees have to be rehired, he explained.

“All of that is stopped right now,” McLane said. And there’s “no wiggle room in the schedule” for restarting the hiring process at a later date and ensuring crews are ready for the height of fire season.

“We don’t have the ability to snap our fingers and just bring these people back,” he said.

The freeze means that fire trucks in Utah could be left with two people per truck instead of four or five – and some trucks won’t be staffed at all, according to CNN affiliate KSL.

The Department of the Interior, which employs firefighters through the Bureau of Land Management, told CNN in a statement it was “implementing President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order across the federal civilian workforce.”

The US Forest Service told CNN that “wildland firefighting positions are considered public safety positions” and the department has been “actively working” with the White House Office of Performance and Personnel Management.

Cal Fire, which described the Forest Service as “an important partner,” told CNN it’s “unknown at this time how this freeze will impact the protection of federal lands in California.”

Understaffed and underpaid

The freeze also comes as fire departments across the country have already faced staff shortages. In Los Angeles, where devastating wildfires killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes in January, the fire department is less staffed than almost any other major city, with less than one firefighter for every 1,000 residents.

And federal firefighters too have struggled to maintain staffing, largely because they are “woefully underpaid,” according to Steve Gutierrez, who represents federal firefighters and other land management employees for the National Federation of Federal Employees. Federal firefighters can make just $15 an hour starting out, according to Gutierrez, who called attention to a bill currently in Congress that would raise firefighters’ pay.

“No one does this to become a millionaire,” he told CNN on Saturday. “They save lives every single day by preventing communities from burning.”

The freeze “instills no confidence” in the federal government among federal firefighters, said Gutierrez, who worked as a wildland firefighter for 15 years.

“The only people that have their back right now is their union,” he said.

The longer the freeze goes on, the higher the chance that firefighters waiting to be rehired for the season will take jobs elsewhere.

“It’s very likely we can lose all these skilled employees, that are skilled resources that the American taxpayers paid for, to other entities, and never recuperate on that,” Gutierrez said. “We’ll never see our return on investment.”

Trump’s executive order specifies that it does not prohibit hirings to “maintain essential services, and protect national security, homeland security, and public safety.”

The effect on firefighters comes because the White House has not said that firefighters fall under those “essential services” and thus warrant an exemption from the freeze, according to McLane.

“We need to find out soon if there is intent to exempt wildland firefighters from the hiring freeze,” he said.

Similarly, Gutierrez said, “We haven’t heard anything from the agency, whether they had filed an exemption or not, because there’s been no communication,” referring both to the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture.

McLane said the freeze has produced a “lingering uncertainty” and anxiety among federal firefighters, who already work in dangerous, high-stress conditions, traveling across the country on short notice to battle dangerous wildfires.

“Emergency responders don’t perform better when they are characters in political theater, and it feels like we are,” he said.