The 44 incident management teams that travel to big fires, each made up of dozens of experienced employees who develop strategy and coordinate slews of firefighters, are either tied up, taking required time off to rest or preparing for their next assignment, according to federal officials.
"We've had to send all the teams out," said Piper Brandt, public affairs specialist at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, which helps run the federal response to wildfires. "We have a lot of large fires, and it's gotten really busy."
The current unavailability doesn't mean federal firefighters won't respond to new fires; the management units can sometimes handle more than one burn, and states such as California as well as major municipalities often have their own teams that can step in to aid the federal government and oversee federal employees on wildfires.
However, the shortfall spotlights the enduring and crippling staffing problems that have recently plagued federal firefighting ranks, even as huge fires become more common.
The U.S. Forest Service, which is the primary employer of federal wildland firefighters, has struggled to recruit and retain staff for several years, largely because of the increasing demands of the work and the low pay. Firefighters say the exodus of high-level and specialized employees has only made it harder to fill the leadership teams handling big blazes, since these employees generally staff the units
Called "complex incident management teams," the team members are usually federal employees, often with the U.S. Forest Service, who are called in from their regular jobs to help with wildfire response.
The employees may be supervisors of a national forest, finance managers or meteorologists, and their work on the leadership team can vary from marshaling fire crews to planning food and lodging for firefighters to sharing safety information with a community. The effort can involve thousands of people and tens of millions of dollars and determine whether homes, towns and even lives are saved.
With nearly 70 large fires currently burning in the western United States, including Southern California's Line Fire, Bridge Fire and Airport Fire, the incident management teams have become overstretched and, since Sunday, unavailable for new assignments. It's happened during busy periods before but is uncommon.
For the past two months, the National Interagency Fire Center has placed the country at what's called Preparedness Level 4 or 5, denoting the highest levels of demand on firefighters. Severe heat this summer, coupled with a bumper crop of burnable vegetation after two wet years in places like California, has heightened fire risk.
So far in 2024, almost 7 million acres have burned nationwide, the most since 2018, according to federal records.
Because of the uptick in wildfires over the past decade, in part due to the warming climate, the federal government this year increased the number of management teams that respond to large fires.
The change involved consolidating what were the most experienced and best equipped leadership teams, called "Type 1" teams, with the next-most experienced "Type 2" teams, after enhancing the training of the Type 2 teams. This resulted in the new complex incident management team and more of them.
Even with this change, the demand for the teams has outstripped supply.
Brandt, with the National Interagency Fire Center, said that the strain on leadership wouldn't keep firefighters from doing their job.
"It's not that we don't have any resources to manage a fire. It's just that we have to do it not by our first choice but maybe our second choice," she said. "We always find a way to make do with what we have."
The federal government also runs "Type 3" teams, which typically respond to minor fires and can help with bigger blazes.
In California, the state's Cal Fire agency operates six top-level incident management teams. While the fire season has been busy for the state as well, four of the Cal Fire teams were available this week to respond to new fires.
Ed Fletcher, information officer for Cal Fire, said the unavailability of federal teams puts additional stress on the state but nothing that couldn't be accommodated so far.
"Firefighting involves sharing resources, whether it's a strike team or an engine or an entire incident management team," he said. "Mutual aid is an important part of fire protection."
Federal officials said cooler weather in Southern California and the Rockies was helping firefighters gain ground on many blazes, and they anticipated that at least one complex incident management team would free up later this week.
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