I think it would be fair to say that lack of staffing is the biggest obstacle.
âŚand, I might necessarily add that this is a tougher row to hoe in some counties than others, pretty much directly connected to how much of the fuels treatment, mechanical, RX and both, needs to be done on Federal and private land.
Even to suggest that, this year, Federal and LG leadership are better off âinvestingâ in wages for fuels crews than the latest AI data-driven gimmick and its intellectual value.
In addition, more acres could be allowed to burn for resource benefit, thus, in effect, creating large fuel breaks, if there were sufficient resources to monitor them safely. Not to derail initiativeâŚitâs simply the case that a lot of âunnecessaryâ suppression is done, denying the naturally occurring creation of a break, because public safety cannot afford to turn their back on an active fire that would otherwise result in fuels reduction.
How many times have you heard this?
Everything was going greatâŚthen an unexpected cold front blew inâŚsome people were, like, aw, there goes our burn and our break, some people were, like, yay, the rain will put it outâŚbut what actually happened was outflow winds pushed the fire out of containment, resulting in life and property lossâŚand 24 hours later, it rained.
Just my two cents, from one of those dudes who was never more than five minutes away from traffic control. 
The Ray-Bans were pricey in more ways than one.
TLDR; stop out-pricing the skilled labor it takes to get it done.
Why do I keep harping on wages? Glad you asked.
Perhaps, a hardcore socialist would disagree, but here goes nothing;
Profits â State revenue.
Rents (KIS) â Personal revenue.(*)
Wages â The work that powers the system.
One may scoff, and lean into a basic priority of Profits > Rents > Wages, as the system currently wobbles, waffles and waits, or, in some select areas Rents > Profits > Wages, who also wobble, waffle and wait. Argue revenue the whole live long day, but that revenue ultimately depends on the wages of labor, as many discover every day. This isnât as simple as plugging your ears to the plight of a factory worker being replaced by a robot. As fantastic as drone and AI tech is, it still canât put black line around a wildfire, plumb a controlled burn, manage a lightning fire for resource benefit, cold trail a 200 acre incident, or vote for a representative or supervisor.
(*) property taxes, bonds, measures, etc., for county revenue are also a factor, but itâs simply incorrect to assume that what works, property vs business tax, in someplace like Texas or Florida, where 95% of the land is privately owned, will work north of Redding and east of the I5. Counties west of the Front Range often have to deal with half or most of the county land belonging to the Feds, with public safety being inextricably interwoven with Federal wage policy.
Wages get the fire break done.
While wages get the work done. California is home to 40 million people or about 12% of the population of the United States. Federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25 whereas California Minimum wage is $16.00. California minimum wage is set by state law and will continue to increase every Jan the lesser of the Consumer Price Index for the previous year or $0.50, not to exceed $0.50 per year. Additionally, fast food establishments that have more than 60 locations nationwide have to pay $20.00hr minimum wage.
When did minimum wage become a living wage? I started in the 1980âs at $3.35/hr and was excited to get a $0.10/hr Raise after flipping burgers for 6mo.
California is so out of Wack for the rest of the nation. One need to look no further than ID, AZ, TX, or TN and see how many âformerâ California citizens who have retired from (enter public safety agency here) and taken their retirement and now live a comfortable life.
It starts at MINIMUM WAGE for unskilled, learning type work.
We ALL KNOW any type of FF, RX, otherwise is ANYTHING but unskilled.
Fix minimum wage FIRST otherwise, everything else Socialist follows. Just look at the History of Venezuela the last 30yr.
The logic of the franchise fast food wage does escape me. I didnât really follow what led to it.
Regarding your story. In the mid-to-late nineties, after the Cs, the job market in CA was very tight. Natural resources, construction, housingâŚthese industries were getting crushed by the turn of the century. Ah-node and the Dot Coms were coming. [A collective shudder passes through the crowd. Those were lean years for the Cs.]
Anyways, with 2 seasons and a Class B, I qualified to test for a perm position with CDF. I went out and tested and scored a 98, but they didnât call me. I took a job with the Sacramento City Corps to wait it out and, lo and behold, one day, mucking out a culvert, I ran into a crewmate from Placer who had 4 years in the Air Force, and there we were in that ditch doing manual labor for minimum wage, waiting for calls.
A couple weeks later, I got a call from a roofing company that needed a driver for a boom truck, and I took it. It was hot and stressful driving that old truck and loading roofs in the summer heat, but it paid way better. My crewmate went on to a career with FEMA, USFS and associated agencies and I mostly worked for private outfits after that. The quals and training from the Cs definitely paid off with those jobs.
Nothing prepared me better to catch 60 lb bundles coming off a conveyor to a 6/12 pitch roof, in 100-degree heat with 20 mph gusts, than cutting line in the Sierras. You can assert that working for the man at the drive-through window at Burger King is harder, but I donât believe it. Let alone the hair-raising things that Hotshots do in the Angeles.
[I get it, Hotshot. By the summer of 2001, I had already traded in my hammer and saw for a mouse and keyboard, building the Wonder of our Age. By September, Al Qaida struck mercilessly, and we were at war.]
It does seem sort of strange that an entry level job at the places we stopped at for lunch would pay significantly better. I was more worried about my boom ripping down their strung-up banners at the drive-through than being out competed. No offense, but what me and my loader were doing was way riskier and harder on the bod, and we were paid accordingly.
Perhaps, it will be tough to recruit those people who get that job at the franchise, but they only need so many on a shift, less than one hand crew, so Iâm not sure it will be all that many people, especially if some franchises close because of it.
Weâll see what happens when more people demand a shaded fuel break than a Whopper. And, who gets it done.
Economics 101, supply and demand. If you have too much of a supply and no demand. The value of your supply will fall till demand catches up
In this case, the demand for labor has remained steady and increased with extended life expectancy.
While at the same time, the birthrate in my lifetime has fallen from 2.27 to 1.67. Anything less than a 2.0 is a dying and shrinking society. The replacement has been immigration. But that too is causing issues worldwide.
Put another way, flood the market with cheap, inexperienced, uneducated labor and you artificially keep labor rates low due to SUPPLY & DEMAND for thay demographic. So, what use to be entry level jobs for kids in high school and college. Has now become a need to RAISE A FAMILY because of the flood of cheap, inexperienced, uneducated labor flooding the markets.
Now take all that CHEAP, INEXPERIENCED, & UNEDUCATED labor and organize it into a voting block.
PRESTO
âFight for $15.00â or
âLiving wages are the minimumâ
When in fact, had supply and demand been kept in balance. The middle class would be expanding instead of shrinking.
But, at the end of the day. Plumbers still have to dig ditches, water still falls at .25%, wire doesnât pull itself in a building. AND A FIRE STILL REQUIRES A LINE OF BARE MINERAL SOIL TO BE DECLARED OUT.
'Natch. So, what are you getting worth four dollars an hour at the snack shack? Iâm gonna go ahead and walk the Cs, here, because dorm style living doesnât cost a Corpsmember much, easily strikes out crowded unis, provide everything, are ready to go an hour after the bell rings, and, importantly, are prepared to deploy every single thing a large force needs to establish itself as a fit place for humans and their things, where the infrastructure has been completely destroyed. These are capabilities not ordinarily cheap for wildland firefighters in markets, on minimum wage.
And, they do fire breaks.
Is a year or two of that still entry level on the Fed scale? Is it going to keep up with rents? In other words, does it square with the four dollars and physical demands? And, fairly, will that 20-dollar job still be there in 3 years? The land will be. Itâs high traffic, high volume, and the numbers are bigger in both bottom corners. Consequences of handling much more traffic than low traffic ports.
Minimum wage reflects how deep you are in the river and how fast the current is moving as much as it does the scenery and how it looks from other parts of the big quilt.
The Câs canât fill all their crews. I donât care how much work you have, if you donât fix âSupply & Demandâ the problem will continue to get worse. Itâs LABOR market, not an EMPLOYER market. The Câs arenât Even the bottom of the food chain. In SoCal they just graduated 32 members from a SFT IFSAC FF1 academy. ALL MEMBERS had CF jobs waiting. The Pomona crews have 95%+ job placement and 100% turnover in membership in 12 months or less. Problem is, what was 45 people, turned into 30, now down to around 24. The CA minimum wage problem is only getting worse. Compounded by the birthrate which is baked in and rapidly falling.
âThe game of musical chairs has too many chairs and not enough playersâ. When the music stops, everyone has time to look around and see what chair fits beat. NO WINNERS in this game.
A labor market with high inflation. Cutting to the chase, employers must reconsider back-of-the-napkin models when the cost of the company ship sinking is homelessness and underwater debt. Where trade volume is higher, it appears, risk is higher. Otherwise, okay, you take an after-your-first-job-job for hobby wages, like 7 and a half, because youâre not really trying to get good at it. We know where the bottom-of-the-food chain is. Itâs not at Burger King. For these ends, itâs forward of the direction of the fireâs progress. Even if itâs appraised for a wider market. Sellerâs market, unless the shaded fuel break is done.