Braving the Blaze: Exploring Mental Health, Relationships and Retention in Wildland Firefighting

Jerry: 0:15

Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge Podcast. I'm host Jerry Dean Lund and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button. I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. And, hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review. On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, apple Podcasts and Spotify, it helps this podcast grow and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people that never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make a more of an impact on other people's lives. So if you would do that, I would appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. I have three people on at once, which is going to be very cool because we're going to get lots of different perspectives with the three of you. On here I have Rachel, seth and Robin, so they're going to talk a little bit about some of the research and stuff that they're doing and what's going on in the wildland world and probably a whole host of other topics. So, rachel, I'll give it to you to kind of introduce yourself.

Rachel: 1:19

Okay, I'm Rachel Gramburg. I've been involved in FHIR for almost 10 years now. I have my EMT basic and I work on a helicopter module. I have to leave the agency out just for company media policy, but been in the game for 10 years and love it.

Jerry: 1:39

Very cool, Seth, tell me about you, yeah.

Seth: 1:44

So I've been doing natural resources management in one way, shape or form, for almost 20 years now. I'm heavily involved in prescribed FHIR and some special work. I have the abilities to work in a variety of settings so non-profit, state and federal, so that all is put together now. So, yeah, I work mostly like RXB2 type stuff and task force leader.

Jerry: 2:10

That's very cool, robin.

Robin: 2:13

So I'm the odd duck here. I am a professor of biological sciences. I work in wildland firefighter, environmental health, so looking at how wildland firefighters are impacted by their career, this is a really new field for me. I used to work in FHIR Ecology but thanks to some work that Rachel had started doing, I kind of switched gears and started thinking about these issues. Over the last few years it's been really neat Doing FHIR Ecology work. You get to interact with wildland firefighters a lot, and in my previous position I was helping do a lot of firefighter training and so this has been a group of people that's been near and dear to my heart. So getting the shift to thinking about them and how the career really impacts them has been a really meaningful project.

Jerry: 3:00

Yeah, I bet, to be honest, I feel like the wildland firefighter world kind of gets left out of a lot of the mental health discussions. I feel like there's just not a lot of them happening, at least that's being brought up into the mainstream media. So when I came across to you guys there's research work and the stuff that you're doing as excited because I love. You know, when I did wildland firefighting it was awesome. When I got a deployment, it was awesome. You know some were, one was national, but a lot of them were local deployments and I thought it was super fascinating. But it does take a different toll on your mental health. So, rachel, let's just kind of let's just talk about all three of you, let's just maybe share just a kind of a few minutes and a little bit about your experience and maybe kind of base around the mental health aspect and we'll kind of dive into some research after.

Rachel: 3:58

Okay, okay, it's a big topic, but I'd say a lot of my. What I bring to this team is that I have the on the ground, like I'm still a very low, low level, not even mid level management. Yet when I brought this project idea up to route and it was like like this is bad down in the trenches, like this is not good. The local districts you know you have so many different types of wildland firefighting resources, but a lot of local districts have their their. Youngest people, like seasonal workers, people who don't have health care access because they're working six months a year or less, don't have access to mental health care. Of course they're working these 13 days on one day off type of schedule. Their one day off is spent in a two hour callback status. So you're on call but you're not being compensated for being on call and you have to be back to the station within two hours. And the low, the low hourly wage is also an issue. So you have this huge pressure to get as much overtime as you can in one summer Most of us shoot for if I'm not getting 600 hours over time, I will not work on that crew again. Like I, I'm shooting for a thousand hours over time in six months. So your, your average American, is working 2,080 hours and an American work here and we're getting that in six months time and you know the burnout is a very real factor. But we're also not getting. Once you're in off season you're. The reintegration back into like whatever normal society is can be really tough for people. And there's also that isolation. You're living and working with your crew for the entire summer and then winter everyone just scatters and there's very little connection and it's it's really hard to feel like you're still part of a community and have that support system when everyone scatters to the wind like that. Yeah, and that is just grueling and it's not just your, your hot shot crews, it's a lot of your local resources that really aren't. People aren't aware that they exist and people, just a lot of wild and firefighters in those situations don't get the appreciation and the acknowledgement of how, how tough the work is and that and that's not just for wild and firefighters but the wild and fire community as a whole, cause there's, you know, equipment, operators, dispatchers, fire lookouts, like there's so many pieces to the puzzle.

Jerry: 6:48

Yeah, these fires rarely naturally go out right. There's just these massive amount of influx of people, you know, firefighters and other right logistics and whole other staffs that pile into these areas where these large fires are. So it's, yeah, massive community down to no community. I could see how that would be a little bit tough on your mental health. But I mean these are long grueling days on end through the through the summer.

Rachel: 7:21

Yes, absolutely, it wears on you.

Jerry: 7:26

Yeah, Seth. I mean, you've been in it for so long, You're still around and you're still doing it.

Seth: 7:31

Yeah, yeah. Two points that Rachel was making through is I've kind of maybe not always spent my time in the bottom of the trench. I rode the side side hill for a while and in different times and places. But no doubt, when you talk about life transitions, of folks as they move through and it's one thing to be 23, 25, and hey, my summer is this and I'll see you later, and then maybe I'll pick up a winter gig on a ski lift or whatever, and then, but through the summer, but then as you advance through your life stages, right and then kind of like, okay, well, now I'm trying to raise kids, I'm trying to stay married and I'm also trying to be gone a bunch and work a thousand hours and that kind of stuff and the added complexity that adds into that is kind of where I come into the old timer realm and the timer is like, hey, well, how do you do this? I'm not saying I do it well by any stretch of the imagination, but it is and it is one of those gears where you're switching gears, like when you're on fire. There's a common focus, right, there's a common objective Put the fire out, make a line from here to there, et cetera. When you get home, there's not always a clear objective, because kids need this, spouse needs this home, needs this car, needs this, whatever the case may be, and so you're spreading in different directions and you, like your spouse, may not have the same IAP as you. As far as like hey, what's going on today and what are the objectives for the week, like, and so trying to figure that out, like that's a huge thing and it's that shifting gears, and like how do you retain people with knowledge in the game for so long but accommodate these life changes and life stages as they change? Some people figure it out, some people just get married multiple times, some people just never figure it out. But I don't know. That's where my contribution to this and just like hey, as this kind of a sneeze, some of the stuff means this or that and stuff. So I fit in some of the research work here.

Jerry: 9:49

Yeah, robin, you have a unique perspective. Go ahead.

Robin: 9:54

I have to laugh. So Seth and I have been together for 19 years now. So when he talks about the spouse, that's me. I had say. When he was talking about the IAP, I was like what's? Because the spouse is the incident commander at home while you're gone, right.

Jerry: 10:06

Right.

Robin: 10:07

Oh jeez. But yeah, I approach it from the partner's perspective too. That's, I think, probably my unique take on the mental health part of it is seeing it from a partner's perspective and what it does to a family unit and how much stress it brings back to a home. Those transitions from when he's away to when he comes back are really. They can be volatile, they can be really rough and rocky. They're not times you're excited, everybody's excited, but then he's exhausted and he's also transitioning from being on the deployment to being off and that's really challenging. I think it's also hard on kids. They're excited to see him, they're missing when he's gone and then kind of that day to day. I think as you move into prescribed fire or full-time jobs, you know sometimes it's a few days on a fire, a few days back, and so you're bringing a lot of that back and forth from home a lot more than you are. Maybe when you're gone for a long period you get to have the pure focus and so that kind of erodes into home life all the time. So he has summers and he's doing fire, but then he has fall fire and he has spring fire, I don't know when. Is it not fire season, you know, it's just always fire season now.

Seth: 11:23

Right yeah.

Jerry: 11:25

Those transitions are incredibly difficult, I think, for all first responders. But when you're, you know, like you're saying, when you're gone and you come back for like a day or whatever, a partial day, don't you just kind of want to be left alone for a little bit, like your own time, because you've been with all these people in a tight space, you know living, sharing things, you know, and then you come home and your family wants to be with you.

Seth: 11:56

No doubt. I mean you notice that at lunch right, you're on a ninja mod and you're five days in that conversation that the dinner table slows down a lot because everybody starts to get a little bit worn out with each other. You've heard everybody's story that everybody's caught up on what everybody's doing. So when you get plugged back in at home, that's kind of that sort of mental decompression time as well and that calmer space.

Robin: 12:17

Yeah, there's a lot of struggle with expectations. We had that fight this morning about. You know my I've been gone on a work trip and my expectations of him to be on versus you know my expectations of wanting time to myself when I'm back. You know those are really challenging struggles.

Jerry: 12:32

Yeah, definitely Rachel. Do you share some of those kind of transitional struggles too?

Rachel: 12:37

Yeah, but it's just me and my dog at home, so it's a lot easier. He doesn't talk to me. He's like let's go for a run. Let's go for a run and you know, I can. I can spray him with a spray bottle. I could put him in a crate. It might be found upon with your spouse, you know, but I do.

Jerry: 12:54

Somebody's taking care of the dog while you're gone.

Rachel: 12:57

Oh, I have a dog share agreement with my parents. I'm really, really lucky to have my family. It's really supportive of my career. It's really hard to continue, to continue in this work without a support team, and that I mean. That speaks to the importance of the family at home and how much, how heavy a burden they get to carry when their partner's out on the line. And I totally agree that those assignments when you're at home you know back and forth. Maybe you're working really long days but you're sleeping at home and we had a summer like that on our module and most of the people with family were like this is even more exhausting than when we're gone for two weeks at a time, because at least when you're gone your spouse knows like you're not going to be home for dinner. They know what to expect, basically, yeah.

Jerry: 13:47

And out there in those wildfire areas. You know they're remote, a lot of them, and so being able to communicate with your family is really tough. If you're, if you're lucky, you can search somewhere on the fire that you may have a signal, or if you get back to camp and they've provided that for you. But I mean, as families, they're just really worried because they have no clue what's going on.

Seth: 14:16

So, I can work both ways, though. I mean, if you think back to the days when everybody got on the bus, you got off, you had 10 minutes to use the pay phone, use the bathroom, that kind of stuff, and get back on, and you were completely disconnected and that allowed you to focus on your job. While you did it for 14 days, there's a certain level of mental space I think that gives you, or at least mental grace, maybe, or you don't those problems from home don't start trickling back in to your work. And now that there's signal, more and more places you know there's powers in camp, that kind of stuff, where they bring in the repeaters or several signal Sulfur and signal places there, and then that expectation of what you know, what will he call tonight or that kind of stuff and the kids expectation and all that kind of stuff. So I think it goes both ways. I think it can be great, beneficial, and I think it also can be a detriment to either mission focus or bringing problems from home to work.

Robin: 15:17

Yeah, because.

Jerry: 15:18

I'll go ahead.

Robin: 15:20

I have a separate study with a sleep biologist. We're working on wild and fire dispatchers and sleep right now and one of the comments he made was just think, if you're adding the stress of an argument on top of the stress of work, how much that adds to the danger and the risk and it's a really great point when you think about this is coming from home. This is adding another mental load that could be exacerbating things.

Jerry: 15:46

Yeah, because you can only solve so much from a phone call, right.

Seth: 15:54

And Robin, yeah, very little from a phone.

Jerry: 15:59

And then so, robin, you have to have a lot of I don't know like you're right, you are the commander at home. So the logistics and all the things that are happening there at home being basically you went from having this partnership to just it's you, you've got to take care of basically everything when he's gone and that's a lot of pressure on right. All the spouses are, all the relationships in the wild end world. Yeah, I think that strain of not quite knowing.

Robin: 16:32

The deployment can be pretty quick and random, not planned, so not knowing when it's going to happen. I think that makes a lot of women have to feel like there's maybe not a lot of room for them and their needs during that period and so it can feel like I hear all of them say you're single parenting, like you're single parenting through that time and then the transition back for those six months when they're home all the time can be equally stressful because suddenly there's this expectation of full partnership when you're thinking I didn't have full partnership, I was completely alone and I'm doing this alone, and now they want this equal say and that strain of back and forth like that is a real drain on a relationship.

Jerry: 17:16

Yeah, I mean because coming home you may feel like a little bit of a visitor right After being gone so long. You're like try to integrate yourself back into the family and what's going on there.

Seth: 17:30

Yeah, and I think it's one of the other articles or in that kind of stuff podcast or whatever. But one of the things was, yeah, it's making sure that you're like hey, checking in on what's changed since I've been away and what do I need to be filled in on so I can now adjust and get plugged in in the most efficient fashion. So no doubt that you have to be able to check in and see like and have the grace to be like I don't know what's being going on. You tell me what needs, what's what the immediate need and what else needs to be addressed.

Jerry: 18:05

Yeah, definitely. So kind of like a communication plan upon arrival back to home is pretty important.

Seth: 18:13

There needs to be a solid debrief, that's for sure.

Jerry: 18:18

Do you guys have like a, like a system or that you kind of go through to, to debrief, I guess, and get caught back up and what the needs and wants are?

Robin: 18:28

It's pure chaos. I think pure chaos every time. We always have the best of intentions that it never goes well. We're human.

Seth: 18:37

Good ideas, and maybe some are better than implementing them than others.

Jerry: 18:42

Yeah, kind of talking about just like on fires, the wildland firefighters, the mental health toll it takes. Yeah, being gone from the family is definitely one thing, but I mean we've seen a lot of fires in communities just basically wiping out communities. I mean there's a toll that it takes on the wildland firefighters themselves right From from seeing that and being trying to do the best they can to take care of that problem and sometimes writes out of your control. You can't beat mother nature. I mean Rachel kind of, how does that make you feel?

Rachel: 19:21

No, you hit the nail on the head and you can't try as we might to control nature. We can't. And especially with the way things are going, our fire shazings are getting longer and they're more severe. I've definitely been on a couple fires, I think, most notably 2020, I was on Beachy Creek and that there was an east wind event and just like down power lines everywhere, starting hundreds of new fires, like at night. And then I think I was near the town of Detroit, oregon, and it was just wiped off the map like overnight. But that being said, I think because most of what we're, the work that we do, is we, we preserve life over property, so we don't, we don't see. I think there are two people that passed away in that fire, unfortunately, and that is very tragic, but for how devastating it was, they're actually like. The sheriff's department did a great job of getting people out and evacuating as quickly as possible, and those times can be chaotic, but I'd say it is always. It does suck to see people lose their homes, but that doesn't impact me as much as I've been. I was present for a firefighter, fatality on the line, and that kind of stuff is what really gets me, because it's like you know, we're really undervalued for what we do. And there is that every day we're accepting a certain level of risk, whether or not we realize it, and so that kind of stuff is like that'll get you big time and that kind of puts in perspective. When you do see people's homes burning, like I've had, general public be frustrated with me because I am not necessarily sympathetic to what's going on with them. But to me it's like I get that you have sentimental value, things of sentimental value, but you just need to get into your car and leave, get out of the way and let us do our work safely. And I think a lot of wild and firefighters are not as reactive to seeing homes burn as to seeing that human life preservation of human life type component.

Jerry: 21:47

Yeah, I mean, it's the ultimate goal, right, saving lives and, yeah for sure, property coming next. Any life loss is hard to be a part of or be around, especially in a tight knit community, as the wildland is, and now when the fire together is even more difficult.

Rachel: 22:08

Yeah, I think we definitely have that empathy burnout and I do. I feel guilty and actually I don't feel as guilty as I used to but especially when it's like vacation homes in a resort community, it's like I'm sorry, I don't care about the expensive things you have that you're worried about, just pack up and leave so we can do our job safely. Like there's too many cars. Well, especially when people wanna stay, it's like you're blocking our ingress and egress, like you're making this more unsafe for us to do our job. And, yeah, the empathy burnout is real when it comes to people's stuff.

Jerry: 22:51

Yeah, yeah, seth, I'm sure you've seen a lot of that through your years of trying to save lives and property and then people getting in the way to stop you to do that.

Seth: 23:05

Yeah, and I've been fortunate too because I've worked a lot on the prescribed fire side of things for implementation kind of stuff, so habitat improvement, so I've managed to not have to endure as much of that basically. So that's probably one of the reasons why my burnout is probably not as much as some, for sure, but those times and those interactions definitely will weigh with you and they stick around. But yeah and the it's a mixed bag, and then how you process it when you get home, that's for sure.

Robin: 23:42

You talk about time and dispatch.

Seth: 23:44

Oh yeah, so I actually worked as a dispatcher for a little while too. And then you're the funnel right, like everything comes through you and then have a process like a chain of some medical and that kind of stuff and medicals in that realm. Yeah, I mean, those things stick there and they play through, because you're seeing all the steps of it and as helpless as you are, as the other folks, oh, it's the same kind of deal, like all you can do is get product A to product B and try and point everybody in the right direction and then you just sit there listening to one side of it. So that in itself, and the role of dispatchers and the fact that so much of it's funneled through one place, especially the volume of traumatic event that they process it, is pretty high say in comparison to some field going folks.

Robin: 24:43

Yeah, we've got some numbers on that. So our dispatch survey, over 70% had dispatch to immortality, so that's a really significant number. And then over half had known, personally known a wildland firefighter who committed suicide. And so when you've got that kind of that's just saying that kind of funnel of firefighter communications running through one center, these people tend to be just the real keystone where they're experiencing a lot of trauma funneling and they see and get a lot more of those experiences per person than an average wildland firefighter. So they really get hit hard with it.

Jerry: 25:25

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I have the utmost respect for dispatchers. I think that's got to be one of the hardest jobs out there and it's truly one of those jobs that, like I can say I wouldn't want to do that job and I would probably not be great at that job, just knowing my skillset, because that is, that is just a. Especially on these larger fires and stuff like that, you are the funnel of all kinds of things going on and it's like for me that could be like sensory overload of just like trying to keep track of getting product A to product B when all these other things that are happening. And so I think, yeah, dispatchers are under extreme amount of pressure and, on the other end, like Rachel, you're probably like you know, you're like you know we expected dispatchers, you know when we're out on the line, you know if we need something or whatever, like it may be. Paint, paint the picture. If you're headed to a fire, like, can you paint this a picture of what we're going to, because we don't like the unknown right.

Rachel: 26:29

Yeah, yeah it is. So I am fortunate in that the building, my office building, we have dispatch on one end and then our office is on the other. So I actually have like a better idea of what goes on behind the scenes in your average Wild'em Firefighter. But there's a lot. There are. If you've heard of the Swiss cheese model we use that example a lot on Wild'em Fire, where you know there are so many different holes, especially with communication, like comms are always breaking down, so you get enough of those. You know the holes in the Swiss cheese slices lining up, that's when things fall between the crack or cracks, but definitely the communication. There's some excellent dispatch centers out there. There's some other ones or maybe they had a high turnover, which is very normal in this field of work. Wild'em Fire dispatchers are, you know, moving on to greener pastures. You're going to have a lot of less experienced folks and that's going to affect what types of resources are ordered and how timely they're ordered to support people who are out on the line. But it's definitely it's a major team effort between the folks out on the ground and the fire dispatchers back in the office.

Jerry: 27:48

Yeah, what oh, go ahead.

Robin: 27:50

I was wondering. Three quarters of our dispatch centers are understaffed right now. We're about 220 dispatchers short nationwide in Wild'em Fire and, yeah, our dispatchers if you look at our firefighter mental health, our dispatcher mental health can beat that in terms of that. It's, that's our data support and a lot of times dispatch centers too.

Seth: 28:11

they're covering multiple forests national forest or a mix of BLM and national forest and park service land, and the employees, sometimes even state employees as well, the state fire, whoever's passed with state suppression. Sometimes they're all housed together and so you know you got a lot of different moving parts. You've got some different mentalities sometimes placed in there and the like, and so having all that together and, like Rachel said, the Swiss cheese model of everything coming together and feeling free from start to end, makes it for a high volume, especially when the fire season is going, because they're dealing with the initial attack, so the stuff. But once it goes into a campaign fire, that's going to be isolated into its own little dispatch deal there. A lot of times that'll come out of the center and those communications be held within a lot of other groups there and columns. But so it's the right mix. But it's no doubt there's a lot going on there and, as you put it out, there's a lot of opportunity there.

Jerry: 29:23

Yeah, I know what. Imagine probably the reason why some of the dispatchers are leaving. I mean the pay, probably in, you know, the at a different dispatch center, you know, for a municipality probably pays a lot more, I would imagine.

Rachel: 29:41

Yes, and there are issues right now going on with our federal wildfire dispatchers with their retirement, because Robin correct me if I'm wrong, but like 90% of the folks who dispatchers who answered our survey have primary fire experience. Is that correct, correct?

Robin: 30:00

they have over 90 days on average, two to five years firefighting experience.

Rachel: 30:06

And then as soon as they move over to dispatch right now there's they're losing their fire retirement because they're moving from a primary fire job and Seth probably knows more about the verbiage on this because I'm just you know, I'm one of those knuckle dragon firefighters, but they're like they're losing out. You can go into a secondary fire position and they're trying to change all our dispatchers over into some automotive dispatching baloney instead of, like their, their wildfire dispatchers and they need to maintain that retirement.

Jerry: 30:39

Yeah, totally. I mean that's for that's a lot of years doing. I mean I think it should be 20 years for everybody, right, do your 20 years. Hopefully the pension would be good enough for you to retire. But I mean, you know now, if you're pushing people to do 30 years, how are they going to maintain? You know the level of service to write to the people that they care about, the people on the front line, and to themselves at the same time, because they're such dispatchers that I found are like right, really getting the details and they really care to get the details out. They feel a lot of like internal pressure and and there's not a lot of talk about how they can help like maybe relieve that pressure or work on their mental health or given those opportunities to do that.

Seth: 31:30

Yeah, yeah, and I mean it's, it's intuitive, right, like you want somebody who's done your job to give you the information so you can do your job right. So if they have first hand experience online and doing those kind of things, they're more likely to give you the information that you need. That's really helpful so that you can do your job, and vice versa, and that's kind of stuff. There's obviously people that haven't worked the line that are fantastic, but you know, just as far as understanding that and making it make sense and go forward, so, yeah, it would make sense that you want to have that conduit for folks to branch out and go whichever way, because the resources don't get to the fire without the dispatchers. The fire didn't get out without the resources. The aircraft don't get there without the dispatchers to you. So you know it's an integral part of how we all do our work, whether you're municipal or federal or state or whatever.

Jerry: 32:27

Yeah, robin, what kind of like programs are you seeing? You know, maybe appearing for dispatchers out there to help with this?

Robin: 32:36

None so far. So there's virtually no resources that have been devoted just to dispatch. In terms of the scientific literature, we're going to be the second ever study that looks at dispatch. The first one was in 2014, and it was a focus group of nine individuals, which is good something, but there's nothing other than that this group Wild and Fire Dispatchers. It's just been completely ignored, completely neglected. Our survey one of the most heartwarming things I heard, but also one of the saddest things I heard, was just people being so excited that we noticed them and cared. We got a great response rate because people were excited that we cared. We've got a sleep and workload study going on right now where we look at how their workload and their sleep relate to their error rates, and we've had centers just calling us to volunteer to help because they're excited that we care, and that's that tells you something about one, their ethos and how good they are at just being responsive and, two, how underappreciated they've been.

Jerry: 33:37

Yeah, I think right across the board dispatchers are very underappreciated. But I think the Wildland world they just don't get, just Wildland world in general just doesn't get the in-depth, say, education or publicity to the public on what's really taking place out there on the front lines and what's taking place at dispatch, like how are all these moving pieces coming together and how it affects everybody. Sleep deprivation on the line, sleep deprivation for dispatchers it all takes a toll to, like you said, the rate of a mistake being made is increases with the lack of sleep. That's for anybody right.

Rachel: 34:18

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Jerry: 34:21

What do you want to see done with this study?

Rachel: 34:30

Okay. So the initial study idea that I pitched to Rob and was looking at the barriers to recruiting and retaining federal Wildland firefighters we're still we're we've almost got it out the door in terms of publishing, but that one I heard the GAO is going to also study that topic and I knew I could do a better job and I came up with a survey, interviewed, you know, a bunch of people like experienced firefighters, 15 years or more experience in the field, and then left Wildland fire to go to structural fire. I knew a couple guys like that. So I was like, hey, let's talk about this. What, what does need to change to keep you? Pitch the idea to Robin. She put a team together. We actually like we went big with it and I guess the whole impetus for me was like getting the higher ups, like the agency heads and people in decision making positions, such as our legislators, like I want them to see what the people on the ground have to say, because we, we know what's best for us. It's just a matter of bending the right ears and getting people to listen to us. And so we, we have the numbers and we firefighters on the ground we already know, you know, increase in pay, better work life balance, better retirement and healthcare benefits, options for retirement buyback for folks who spent 10 years as a seasonal employee and weren't able to put into a retirement system. And that that's just, you know, the tip of the iceberg. There's also a lot of cultural issues that need addressed and hopefully can be once we're able to retain good people. But yeah, I was just looking for the right people to hear what we have to say from the folks on the ground.

Jerry: 36:33

Do you oh?

Robin: 36:34

go ahead, robin, I'm going to say once you, once you start diving into it, you start realizing just how little there is and how much more there is to deal with it. I mean, there's very few fields where you can look at the look at the existing data and say this field doesn't exist yet and this field really is just a frontier in science when it comes to what needs to be asked. The basic questions haven't been addressed in terms of health and terms of mental health, in terms of well-being, just all across the board. These are fundamental questions that are being asked, that have been asked for, like mining, which seems like such a small niche field, but mining NIOSH has devoted millions of dollars to understanding the health and safety of mine workers. You know Wildland Fire. There's been one study maybe in the last decade in Wildland Fire from NIOSH, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. That's something that's got to change. That's not okay.

Jerry: 37:34

Yeah, I mean, why is that not okay?

Robin: 37:38

Oh, I mean, if you don't have a foundational base of scientific research to make good policy decisions off of, you're just making policy decisions off of whims and ideas and opinions, and that is dangerous, because who knows what your whim and idea and opinion is going to be? At whose idea or whim or opinion you're going to pick?

Jerry: 37:57

Could culture play into that as well?

Robin: 37:59

Oh yeah, absolutely. The culture of the day, the opinion of the day, yeah, that will rule the legislation and that can't work. It's absolutely important as an idea.

Jerry: 38:13

I think that overall treatment of Wildland Firefighters is just like well, this is the culture, this is the way we've always treated them. They're a necessity, but we really don't I hate to say this truly value the work that they do and what they give up in their lives to do this work. I just think the world dismisses that, especially right. Legislature totally dismisses that as far as I'm concerned.

Rachel: 38:43

Yeah, absolutely.

Jerry: 38:46

Do you think, with this research, that you're going to be able to bend some ears to maybe take a listen?

Rachel: 38:55

Yeah, absolutely, we've already. So the Wildland Firefighters survey is not published yet but, robin, early on I was like Robin, I kind of want to do preliminary results and go knock on some doors and talk to people. She was game. So I met with quite a few of the legislators, my elected reps here in Washington State and also I mean Robin and Seth did up the website. Robin, we were featured in LA Times.

Robin: 39:34

Yeah, LA Times. We just got in the High Country News. Rachel was in PR recently. We yelled loud.

Rachel: 39:42

That's right. That's right. That's how things get done.

Jerry: 39:49

I see how things are getting done here as passion and purpose. That's how I see all three of you like. The passion and the purpose behind it, that's the driving thing behind you which is going to help you get out there right. And then those ears and knock on those doors and change people's mind. Because without that passion right it's you're going to run up against some hard people to talk to. What other changes do you think that are out there that could be made to the Wildland world?

Robin: 40:26

Right now, imminently, november 15th, 16th 17th, Right now most imminently. On November 17th, when the budget, the continuing resolution, runs out, the current firefighter pay will drop by about 50% or $20,000, whichever model it falls under. So firefighters are set to have a very substantial pay cut if no new legislation is passed. And that is probably the most imminent issue is getting some kind of permanent legislation to solidify Wildland Firepay at the rate it is now was it?

Jerry: 41:06

there was temporary right.

Robin: 41:09

Yeah, it was a temporary increase that was meant to kind of sustain things until a permanent solution was enacted. They've run the clock out on that temporary increase and now here we are about to say, all right, well, enjoy that two years where you had a living wage. Now you're back to that $15 an hour that you can go make at McDonald's.

Jerry: 41:32

That is so sad. I mean, I always look at the federal pay and it's like and you compare it right To, like you said, some of these other other jobs that are, I have to say, less skilled, right.

Rachel: 41:45

That's for sure, definitely.

Jerry: 41:47

Yeah, less risk, yes, All the way around right. And then, like when we were like why do I continue to put myself out there on the line If I'm just going to get these miserable wages?

Rachel: 42:02

Yeah and when, when elected reps do pay attention, it seems like it's more like we're political fodder and there's a big talk, but then there's there's never ever a solution a permanent pay fix, like right now we have a continuing resolution and that bought us more time. But right now the Wild and Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act could be a fix and maybe it'll pass in the Senate, but we've got folks in the house that are holding things up and committee. So yeah, it's. I am looking at the pay cliff, thinking it's definitely going to happen. I don't. I don't have faith in our elected reps to get a permanent pay fix in place before then.

Jerry: 42:49

And as that's all across the board, right from top to bottom firefighters, right Dispatchers, all logistics, every single person involved in that right We'll receive that pay cut.

Rachel: 43:02

So right now I believe it is as far as the pay cut, it is the Wild and Firefighters. But the Wild and Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act would include your dispatchers and your equipment operators, which have not always, have not been historically, included in any sort of pay fixes. So that's definitely a plus that they got more of the Wild and Fire community included in that.

Jerry: 43:27

Yeah, definitely. I mean this is going to be kind of an obvious question, but I mean taking a 20% let's say whatever it is pay cut, I mean, how is that going to affect everybody's mental health and desire to stay?

Seth: 43:44

Well it's devastating.

Robin: 43:48

Game over. And the ability to recruit and you can throw that in there too. You know this is the end of fire season, but then you get recruitment coming up in spring and it's going to be a real hard sell when those wages go back down to get retention of the old, last season's people and recruit anybody new.

Jerry: 44:07

It's already hard enough to make a living now with the cost of things and then taking a pay cut it was going to. How are you going to make that up? Right, try to work more overtime hours.

Rachel: 44:20

Yeah, if you're lucky if you're lucky that they're available. It is. I will say there are a lot of people who will finish the season out even with this pay cut. But there's folks who aren't going to come back and even with that pay bump that we received from the infrastructure bill, some of the most experienced folks on my crew left to go work for a structural department where you work nine days a month and you make six figure income and actually have work life balance and get to spend time with your family. So that was even after we got that infrastructure bill. Money and just federal pay has not kept up with inflation in years. So we are receiving a pay cut in the sense that our wages haven't kept up with inflation. And then on top of that, we have this fiscal pay cliff that we're looking at. Yeah, we're in trouble for sure.

Jerry: 45:17

Robin, how would you recommend this family of wild and firefighters go through this right? This is going to be very difficult if it happens and the stresses on home life and everything like all those dynamics are going to come into play. Like what would you suggest?

Robin: 45:41

Yeah, from a family perspective. I mean you've got increasing financial stress combined with, possibly, job hunting stress, combined with just a general stress of the unknown. I think that's a time to be really mindful as a family of warning signs of mental health and just really check in, be present and make sure you can do as much as you can to support each other, because that's a crisis point Financially, emotionally, the whole mind yards right there.

Jerry: 46:21

Yeah, I mean these people are leaving, going out to look for jobs, right, the skills set that a lot of them have don't really transfer into other skills sets, maybe going to municipality or structural firefighting or something like that, but not everybody has that opportunity to do that.

Robin: 46:44

Yeah, we're not being able to move or not being place bound. There's a lot of factors that weigh into the ability to get to a different location, so it's interesting when we haven't got a good survey date on this. But I'd really like to look at some of the where do firefighters go when they leave the field, because we see people leaving the field pretty regularly before the 10 year mark. We don't quite know where they're going to.

Jerry: 47:11

Yeah, that actually would be fascinating to see where they're going to and maybe where they're staying.

Robin: 47:19

Yeah.

Jerry: 47:19

As well, like how long you left here? Did you stay at that job or did you keep bouncing around to try to find something that you love just as much as being a wildland firefighter? I know, once you retire, like for me, I'm looking for different jobs. It's like, wow, this is kind of demoralizing out there, all these skills and certifications being not a lot in the public sector.

Robin: 47:49

Yeah.

Jerry: 47:51

So, rachel, what do you want people to take away from our conversation and how can they help you? The three of you continue to move forward.

Rachel: 48:02

I would say contact your elected reps and encourage them to support the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act. There's also some really great organizations. Grassroots Wildland Firefighters does a lot advocating for the Wildland Fire community. And then there's the Wildland Firefighter Foundation which helps wildland firefighters and their families when there's an injury or a fire line death. And they actually this past March started a mental health program for the Wildland Fire community, not just Wildland Firefighters, they will coordinate finding new mental health care, hopefully before you hit that crisis point. Eric Broxham is their mental health coordinator. I actually talked to him yesterday and he said you just look him up on Google, give him a call, send him an email and he will coordinate and get folks the care that they need to address their overall well-being.

Jerry: 49:07

Yeah, that's awesome. They're taking that on and there are some resources out there, but not a lot of them, unfortunately.

Rachel: 49:15

Yeah.

Jerry: 49:17

Sutton and Robin, what do you think that the audience needs to hear and people need to do to help? You know, perpetuate what you guys have been talking about, like, take it to the next step, keep moving forward, support you, support the Wildland Firefighter community. What's your thoughts?

Robin: 49:38

So I think anytime you can increase the visibility of Wildland Firefighters. So when we talk, I mean this is great being on this podcast including Wildland Firefighting in emergency response, I can you see that list and you know explicitly saying Wildland Firefighting is part of this, that's great. So, yeah, making them visible in any way you can. A lot of times it's Wildland Fires that catch the news and not Wildland Firefighters, and so if you know a Wildland Firefighter, I think checking in too, just to be able to say, hey, how's it going? Especially in the winter, that can be a really challenging time. So, increasing visibility, making the support available Anything else on the thing.

Seth: 50:19

No, I mean, that's really the big deal. It's like you know, human values and exposure, right so?

Jerry: 50:26

what does?

Seth: 50:26

anybody need right, a sense of community right, like they belong in some way, shape or form. And then just exposure, just knowing that, oh well, that thing exists and I should care about it because X, y and Z reasons, you know.

Robin: 50:41

Spreading the word that there's issues that need resolve this field has struggled that need resolution, and what Rachel said too, because Rachel's really got the two best points. Oh, yeah.

Rachel: 50:56

Oh jeez.

Jerry: 50:58

How big is the Wildland community? How many firefighters are there? I've kind of lost track, to be honest.

Robin: 51:04

That's a tough number. We tried really hard to pin that number down because we get seasonals and temporaries and then people who are, you know, forestry people, but they do prescribe burning and they count themselves. And then you've got people who are contractors, volunteer firefighters, that are mostly structural but sometimes do grass fires. So we don't really know, but I would give you an estimate of 15 to 17,000 maybe.

Jerry: 51:30

Yeah, I thought it'd be bigger than that, but it is a relatively small group that can, unfortunately, get passed over, but their actions and stuff that they do are massive.

Robin: 51:44

Yeah, and I may be. I may be estimating the federal population there, so I may be way, way low. That's the federal population. So, yeah, that number is probably way low when you include the state and the municipality.

Seth: 51:55

Yeah, I think it's where you want to put the guide rails and everything, because I mean, as you consider, full-time permanent, like that's the sole profession. And then you have a lot of municipal departments that either have a wild end of apartment nestled into them or they're tasked with both, and then obviously it helps support the national effort to be in like an AD or something like that and going out, and then you just have the contract field. So it starts to like get out into the natural resources field and you got people who do tree planting part of the year and then they're actually putting in line other part of the year and heavy equipment guys that are doing long jobs or making roads part of the year. But then, hey, now the fire season's on and we'll get tapped into some AD work or some contract work. So that's a real ambiguous number to try and nail.

Robin: 52:48

Your river statistics. There's a member of Forestry, so can't get it from there either.

Jerry: 52:53

Yeah, I think that would be a really hard study to try to put the guard rails on right, to figure out who's who and where are they at and what are they doing and when are they doing it, and like to break down some solid numbers. I mean in the grand scheme of things, when I look at it. Okay, let's say 17,000 wildland firefighters, you know the pay compared to all the other things that are going on in the world and the country is pretty minor. You know, lying item in the budget, right?

Robin: 53:25

Yeah, I will say. The case you can make is the impact doesn't really matter. The pay disproportionately or the impact disproportionately because of the amount of acreage that burns and the national infrastructure that's protected by them is disproportionately important. So while the pay might be a small issue, their impact is huge.

Jerry: 53:47

Oh, for sure, Totally. One last question before I let you guys go Does the wildland community? Did they have a solid like peer support team, or did they have a structure of that?

Rachel: 54:02

That because we're our community is so disjointed between so many different agencies. That is something that's lacking, and each agency, like the feds, have their own peer support network, which can be really hard to plug into, and they have any sort of wildfire organization that is part of the IAFF union. They have their own peer support networks and it is. It can be really hard to find the right help that you need, based on who you're working for and what sort of membership that they they paid into. But I would say the Wild and Fire Fighter Foundation, that is one organization that doesn't care who you work for. If you're in the wild and fire community, they're going to take care of you, like you can reach out to them and they'll do what they can to take care of you.

Jerry: 55:03

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on today. Rachel, seth and Robin, I appreciate your perspective and your, you know, enlightenment of this problem. That's a. It doesn't happen just once. You know it happens seems like it's happening almost yearly, like this pay thing and retention, and it's just like this ongoing problem which makes me believe some of it's also cultural as well. I mean it is what it is right, but I mean please keep up the good work. I mean because this is this is valuable, valuable work and like right, you're exploring this new field kind of in it and that's got to be exciting as well.

Robin: 55:45

Thanks so much for having us. Thank you.

Jerry: 55:48

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