Our gratitude to the wasteland firefighters is not only

Our gratitude to the wasteland firefighters is not only

“Thank you firefighter!” shouting temporary banners flying along the I-5 corridor, winding through southern Oregon and northern California. “The fireman is our superhero!”

However, this depiction is limited to the realm of fantasy. The men and women employed by the National Forest Service on the front lines of wildfires are not considered firefighters outside the hearts and minds of the people they protect. Instead, most of these workers fall into the federal classification of “forestry technicians.”

Forestry technicians are hired as contractors with a minimum starting salary of $13.50 per hour and do not enjoy off-season benefits. Their mission is to defend our western cities on the burning planet. This is a difficult, traumatic, and technically challenging job, but the bureaucrats who hired them regard them as one-offs.

Image courtesy of Conor Nelson

In the first summer after my closest childhood friend spent the fire season in central Utah, he joked to me darkly: “They only call you a firefighter after you die.”

When these crew members encounter tragedy, the senator may issue an objective statement in response to the death of a crew member, thanking the young firefighters who put out the fire that threatened our country. Hollywood may write a tear-jerking movie that records the most destructive death toll, and the Millennium Forest will be burned for the first time in history. The federal wages of “forestry technicians” may rise by a few dollars per hour, and the president may demand better forest maintenance.

Climate change and the accompanying threat of wildfires are usually equivalent to a great survival war between nature and human extreme forces. Like the awards to men and women fighting on the front lines in wartime, wasteland firefighters are regarded as the last line of defense at the frontline of the wilderness. The scorching firefighter is the mythical warrior at the center of our war story. He is a warrior who stands firm against the ever-changing environment of the earth.

But the self-evident factor is that war stories against fire are often played out in the same way as in enemy forces: terrible accidents, unspeakable deaths in hell. It was too early to leave, a friend of the left-behind family said: The young child is alone, and the spouse is at home and widowed.

There may be monuments in our hometown, touching obituaries in local forums, and the state capitol building at half-mast. There is a GoFundMe link to provide crowdsourcing support for families who cannot access federal resources or pensions. In the view of the federal government, the death of a purely seasonal contractor is not worthy of any further compensation.

The US Forest Service estimates that by 2015, the fire season has increased by at least two and a half months from 1970. By the fall of 2020, the sun in San Francisco has not risen; nearly 10,000 fires have destroyed more than 4.2 million acres of land in California, accounting for more than 4% of the state’s land area, and dense smoke enveloped the sky.

although The growing and imminent fire threat This has troubled us for nearly half a year, and wasteland firefighters only get a salary increase of 0.25 cents a year.

The friendship and skills built on the tour, rather than trivial compensation, help to retain wildland firefighters season after season. But many people must quit before the age of 26, by which time they have given up their parents’ health insurance and can no longer work without benefits.

Because of their part-time status, federal workers will not receive health benefits during the offseason – they are fired after working for about six months each year and work more than 100 hours a week. If they are distributed within one year, their working hours will be equivalent to 48 hours a week.

The wasteland staff of the “Forest Technicians” worked tirelessly for the two-week trip, with the two-day break as an intermediate break. They often travel to and from the fire scene throughout the night, not during working hours; in fact, a field force may find that they spend several weeks on tour, with a rest day at each end.

Next year, they celebrate an additional day of rest during this period.

Image courtesy of Conor Nelson

The physical hazards of firefighting also extend far beyond the prolonged fire season. Field firefighters inhale more smoke than most people face in their lifetime; it is estimated that their risk of lung cancer is 8% to 43% higher than that of the general public, and their cardiovascular mortality rate is 16% to 30% higher.

In addition, the fire season is also psychologically cruel, and field firefighters are often exposed to great stress and trauma. Recent research It has been shown that the rate of alcohol abuse, possible PTSD, suicidal ideation, and generalized anxiety disorder among field firefighters is 2 to 10 times that of the general public. In 2017, more firefighters committed suicide than firefighters died while performing their duties.

As patriots, these field workers will live like this until the cost of work makes their bodies unable to continue. More ambitious will turn to structural firefighting work to obtain tangible benefits and pensions, which annoys their wasteland managers. In order to seek stable jobs, fair pay and insurance, they will be excluded from their jobs and friends. Some people may avoid the post-traumatic stress reported by retired wasteland forestry technicians, but many will not. Fewer people avoid the long-term physical effects of inhaling smoke.

If they are lucky, they will never be called firemen.

Elena Klonsky is a student at Columbia Climate School Climate and Society Master’s Program.