Some US firefighters are paid as little as fast-food workers. Will Congress change that?

Firefighters from across the US fought side by side to quell the firestorm in Los Angeles this month, working tirelessly together in dangerous and chaotic conditions. But there was one glaring difference among them: federal firefighters are paid just a fraction of what state and local crews make doing the same work.

It’s a problem that’s long plagued the federal crews who play a crucial role in protecting the country when catastrophes unfold.

Salaries that rival those of fast-food workers, and outdated job descriptions that don’t capture the extreme hazards and levels of expertise needed in their work, are contributing to severe levels of physical and mental strain, federal firefighters say. Many take on more than a thousand hours of overtime in a season, trying to make a livable wage.

As the climate crisis turns up the dial on disasters and their services are increasingly needed, many federal wildland firefighters are struggling to make ends meet.

Scores have left federal agencies in recent years, taking valuable experience and knowledge with them, as those still in the trenches try to pick up the slack. Budget constraints have also forced the United States Forest Service (USFS), the country’s largest employer of wildland firefighters, to leave staffing gaps on engines unfilled and cut their seasonal employees even as fire risks linger through the year.

“This isn’t just confined to the Palisades,” said Jacob Ruano, a firefighter with the USFS who deployed from northern California to help as hurricane-force winds swept into Los Angeles.

The Hughes fire on 22 January 2025 in Castaic, California. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Speaking in the immediate aftermath as he worked to put out spot fires in the smoldering rubble where a neighborhood once stood, Ruano described how he and another man on his crew together saved at least five homes during the treacherous firefight. If there had been more of them and the budget constraints had been addressed sooner, perhaps, he said, more homes could have been saved.

“We would have had more employees – we would have had more resources,” Ruano said.

In 2021, Joe Biden instituted a temporary pay bump and ensured wages couldn’t dip lower than $15 an hour. With funds from the bipartisan infrastructure act, federal firefighters were given a bonus of either $20,000 or a 50% rise in their base pay, whichever was less.

The boost was intended only as a salve to stem a mass exodus, help with recruiting and buy legislators time to codify a fix. Those funds have expired and long-term solutions have languished in Congress as bills proposed to support federal wildland firefighters have stalled for years.

With just months before another fiscal cliff threatens to gut their wages again, firefighters like Ruano are placing their hopes in bipartisan support for two bills now circulating in Congress.

“If they can push these bills, it would help tremendously,” he said. “It would help the community, it would help the government – it would help every American citizen.”

Pay increases are just the beginning, according to dozens of federal firefighters who have spoken with the Guardian over the last year. Misclassification of their jobs has left a cumulative effect on their lives, leaving them with smaller salaries, less overtime pay and reduced retirement savings. A marked stagnation in career development and opportunities has pushed more experienced and management-level firefighters out the door.

A fire in the Angeles national forest in Los Angeles county, California, on 9 January 2025. Photograph: Ringo Chiu/Reuters

A firefighter in the Angeles national forest on 9 January 2025. Photograph: Ringo Chiu/Reuters

“Federal wildland firefighters are being left behind,” said Kelly Martin, a retired fire chief who called the issue “one of the biggest travesties”. “We were the most respected and revered workforce for decades,” she added. “Now it is a shell of what it once was.”

The USFS has lost nearly half of its permanent employees over the last three years, according to data reported on by ProPublica. While the agency claims to meet its hiring goals each season, new recruits are often entry-level, lacking the experience of the lost middle management. Firefighters told the Guardian it’s added to the dangers they face on the fire line.

“You don’t have enough people overseeing things,” Morgan Thomsen, a firefighter with the USFS who was speaking from his position as a union steward said last September. “The ripple effect is a huge safety concern.”

The USFS had been working to convert more seasonal firefighters into permanent positions to cover fire risks stretching into months once thought to be safe. But budget constraints forced the agency to shift course.

By the time the fires ignited in Los Angeles, many seasonal workers had already been let go.

“Thousands of wildland firefighters would have been ready to hop on a truck and head down,” said Ben McLane, a federal fire captain. His crew roster had been reduced by nearly a third.

While the wind-driven fires were nearly impossible to contain in the first days as they spread rapidly, more federal crews could have played a part in protecting homes within the fire footprint.

“We had a very robust workforce that could go anywhere in the country to support these efforts year-round,” said Martin. “What we bring is our smaller trucks and smaller engines and our skilled expertise and physical fitness … We bring a complement to state and municipal firefighting and I think that’s being forgotten.”

Two bills, one introduced in the House and one in the Senate, would secure the 2021 pay levels and add some foundational support, but firefighters and advocates say they mark just the beginning of many reforms needed – and that’s if they even pass. After years on a merry-go-round of continuing resolutions and supplemental pay without a permanent solution, hopes aren’t high.

“It feels like a thousand-piece puzzle and the pay is one little puzzle piece,” said Martin. “If you ask me now, I don’t have that optimism that it is sustainable.”

Firefighters mop up hotspots on 9 January 2025 near Altadena, California. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

These challenges are also coming at a time of potentially sweeping change, as the Trump administration seeks to reshape the federal government. Questions are swirling around how newly issued executive orders to halt hiring, shrink agencies and pause grant funding will affect firefighters and the work they do.

On Tuesday, nearly all of the 3 million people who work for the US government in permanent positions received buyout emails offering more than seven months of pay if they resign by 6 February, adding to the speculation and confusion.

Firefighters have been left to wonder how their work and the support for it will change under the new administration, as agency officials await orders from newly installed leadership.

Despite the uncertainty, McLane and others like him are still committed to showing up; the work they do is too important not to.

“I am thankful for the work that we do,” McLane said. “Whether it’s in the name of resilience or reaction or resistance, whether I am fighting fire in a cul-de-sac in LA or doing a prescribed burn – it feels right.”

But it has gotten harder. Bipartisan support has been easy to garner; the pay and programmatic changes that are essential to retain professional firefighting crews at the level they are now needed, however, has waned.

“Fires moved from the backcountry to the backyard and people are showing up to be in the midst of it,” McLane said. “But our pay model doesn’t reflect that …

“It’s starting to feel like the public servants who run for office saying they are on the same team as me are not actually on my team … The work I do stands on its own two feet. I don’t know if that can be said for folks who haven’t gotten this done yet.”