How firefighters are contending with extreme heat in California

July 14, 2024 3 AM PT

When a wildfire started in the mountains of Fresno County late last month, much of California was on the cusp of a heat wave that would go on to smash records both for its intensity and duration. Over the next week and a half, as the Basin fire swelled to more than 14,000 acres and temperatures in the area reached 112 degrees, at least nine firefighters were treated for heat-related illness. Four were taken to local hospitals, three of them airlifted from the fire line.

As the heat wave stretched on, the incident management team overseeing the fire formed a working group to deal with the extreme conditions. They provided firefighters with electrolytes to add to their drinking water and cooling towels to place on their necks.

And on July 5, in what may have been a first in the state, they constructed five generator-powered, air-conditioned yurts — three out on the fire line and two at the incident command post — to be used as emergency cooling stations.

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“I’ve been doing this for over 35 years, and I can tell you that I have never seen this done before,” said Mike Lindbery of the U.S. Forest Service, public information officer on the Basin fire. “The heat has caused this team, which is basically coming in to solve problems, to look at a different aspect of problem solving.”

Much attention has been paid to the ways in which extreme heat ratchets up the risk of wildfire and intensifies its behavior, resulting in longer, more destructive fire seasons. But perhaps just as vexing are the challenges heat poses to the health of firefighters themselves, who already perform backbreaking work saddled with heavy equipment in unforgiving terrain.

On Tuesday, Daniel Foley, 27, a first-year Forest Service firefighter assigned to the Bly Ranger District in Oregon’s Fremont-Winema National Forest, collapsed after completing a fitness test and died at a local hospital. It’s not yet clear whether heat was a factor. The area was under a heat advisory, with afternoon temperatures in the mid-80s to 90s, depending on the elevation, according to the National Weather Service.

“It’s one of the hottest years on record for me so far, that I can remember,” said Mike Noel, assistant director of risk management for the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region. He has been a wildland firefighter for 38 years. “All agencies have had multiple heat-related injuries this year.”

People stand next to an air conditioned yurt, which sits next to an oak-dotted hillside.

California has seen an uptick in heat-related illness among firefighters over the last 10 days or so coinciding with the elevated temperatures, he said. Seven firefighters assigned to the Lake fire in Santa Barbara County were treated for such illnesses on Thursday alone, he said.

At least four firefighters suffered from heat-related illness while fighting the Thompson fire in Butte County on July 2, and at least one on the Sharp fire in Ventura County on July 3, according to public information officers for those fires.

“This is extreme heat throughout the West, and it’s possible whole crews are being affected,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, former wildland firefighter and executive director of nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.

Wildland firefighters wear about 50 pounds of personal protective equipment, including a helmet, safety goggles and a personal pack containing water and equipment, said David Acuna, battalion chief of communication for the southern region of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

They may also carry a 25-pound hose pack, as well as hand tools like chain saws or nozzles. And they often must hike to remote locations and then perform physical labor once they get there, which can include digging fire lines, putting in hose lays and taking vegetation down to bare mineral soil to stop the fire spread — all as they breathe in smoke, dust and debris.

“It’s claustrophobic, sometimes, because it seems like you can’t escape from the heat and smoke,” Acuna said.

Cal Fire firefighters typically work 24-hour shifts, followed by 24 hours off in order to rest and refuel, he said. During those 24 hours on, breaks can be elusive. “If we can catch a quick cat nap in the engine, that’s great, but most of the time we stay engaged,” he said.

Breaks were once openly frowned upon — “it’s that tough, macho culture,” said Riva Duncan, former wildland firefighter and vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group made up of retired and current federal firefighters.

But for many, a wake-up call came in 2011, when Bureau of Land Management firefighter Caleb Hamm, 23, died from exertional heatstroke on a fire in Texas, becoming just the second reported federal wildland firefighter to do so. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report with recommendations for better protecting firefighters was widely distributed.

The incident raised awareness among superintendents, crew leaders and engine captains about early indicators of heat illness, and encouraged firefighters to speak up when they’re not feeling well, Duncan said. Many crews now have EMTs who carry extra electrolytes and cooling blankets and are trained to spot the early warning signs of heat illness, which can include cramps, weakness, nausea and fatigue, she said.

Firefighters in heavy gear walk in a line near scorched ground.

Still, climate change has resulted in an ever-shifting baseline for what conditions firefighters can expect, including more intense, longer-lasting heat waves.

“We’re not even at the halfway mark in July,” Duncan said. “These extreme heat situations started early.”

“People need to understand that fires are behaving differently than they used to,” she added. “It’s not easy to put them out because they’re burning under different conditions than 10, 15 years ago.”

In California, as of Friday, 3,630 wildfires had burned 228,756 acres, compared with a five-year average of 3,743 fires and 111,813 acres over the same time frame, Acuna said.

“The fires are much, much more aggressive,” he said, attributing this to the heat and dryness, as well as the abundance of grasses and other fuels, which were stoked by two wet winters and left largely untouched by two mild fire seasons.

Members of the Redding Hotshots, an elite crew of Forest Service firefighters, are used to dealing with sweltering summer heat. But this season has been punishing even by their standards. They recently fought fires in both the Tahoe and Modoc national forests, where temperatures were in the 100s.

“It’s always hot on fires, but it seems like this year so far has definitely been about dealing with temperatures over 100, if not more,” said hotshot superintendent Dan Mallia.

Forest Service fire crews typically work up to 16-hour shifts, followed by eight hours of rest that are often spent sleeping outside. Although Mallia said breaks can be hard to come by, depending on how a fire is behaving, he says he encourages his members to hydrate, eat well and find shade when they can.

He noted that crews acclimate to the heat by training in it, but that it’s difficult to fully prepare for such extreme conditions.

“At the end of the day when you get out on a fire, it’s a little different,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff going on as far as the work, the stress, the smoke, the heat, the fire — all that stuff definitely ramps up.”

Complicating matters, wildland firefighters are often sent to work in unfamiliar areas, which can make them feel the effects of extreme heat more acutely, said Max Alonzo, national business representative for the National Federation of Federal Employees and a former wildland firefighter who worked for the Forest Service for most of his career.

“I have seen people really struggle when they show up to different climates and different topography that they’re not used to, where they’re not used to the elevation, they’re not used to the weather,” he said. “We’re a national resource, so they’re going to go all over the country.”

He said that agencies could do more to proactively protect firefighters from the heat, including erecting cooldown areas on fire lines. Although he applauded the use of cooling yurts on the Basin fire, he said it’s not normal practice. Normal would be, “Hey, make sure you tell people to stay hydrated,” he said.

More could also be done to alternate crews — pulling firefighters off the line and letting them cool down before moving them back in, he said.

Cal Fire has already made changes to its personal protective equipment in response to rising temperatures, including transitioning to single-layer pants and removing colored ink from wildland jackets and undershirts in response to evidence that it increased the heat levels of the firefighters wearing them.

Federal agencies and many state and municipal departments have also begun to use drones to scout ahead of a fire or ignite backfires, lessening the burden on firefighters who would otherwise have to hike in on foot.

And wildland firefighters in hotter climates sometimes work bimodal shifts — toiling in the morning hours, then pulling back during the heat of the day and getting back out as things cool down in the evening, Mallia said.

Still, some say more changes may be necessary as the planet continues to warm. That could include sending more firefighters to an incident so they can distribute the workload more evenly, or placing more emphasis on nighttime operations.

The conditions also illustrate the increasing prudence of managing some backcountry fires for ecological benefit, treating them more like controlled burns rather than trying to immediately suppress them, Duncan said. That benefits the environment, and it protects the physical health of firefighters by permitting them to focus on fires threatening people or structures, she said. The idea remains politically unpopular, she noted.

It will also be increasingly key to set more controlled fires in the spring and fall to reduce the amount of fuel on the ground come summer, Ingalsbee said.

“Big picture, we’re going to have to be proactively managing fire during the cooler period of the year, rather than attacking all fires at the hottest period of the year, when we fail, and we surpass human physical ability for working in these kinds of conditions,” he said.

One thing appears certain: These conditions are unlikely to improve.

“I got a desperate call this morning from one of our members just like, ‘When is this going to end?’ ” he said Wednesday. “The heat is not ending. We’re just going to have to adapt to the new normal, whatever that is.”