US wildfires are getting bigger and more complex, prompting changes in firefighting workforce

PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) — It’s shaping up to be a long wildfire season, with Texas already seeing its largest blaze in recorded history and firefighters becoming overwhelmed with recent blazes in Virginia.

Just in the first three months of the year, more than 2,669 square miles (6,912 square kilometers) were charred in the United States. That’s more than half of last year’s total, and forecasters are predicting elevated risk of fires over the coming months in the Great Lakes region, parts of the Midwest, Southwest and in Hawaii.

“We’re going to be busy. I couldn’t tell you exactly where right now, but we are going to be busy,” said Alex Robertson, acting director of fire and aviation at the U.S. Forest Service.

With fires growing in size and duration, federal officials in charge of juggling resources and dispatching crews are pivoting to a new business model they describe as the biggest shift in wildfire management in decades. They say it will offer more flexibility when responding to wildfires and ensure that there are more personnel with the training and qualifications needed to deal with the most complex fires.

It’s an idea that has been circulating for years due to the strain put on the wildland firefighting workforce as heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme, and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

In past years, a shortage of top-level Type 1 teams has resulted in Type 2 teams taking on bigger assignments — like those that threaten multiple communities and require more firefighters, aircraft and a constant stream of other resources. This season, 44 leadership teams have been formed to respond to the largest fires across the country.

Managers consider many factors when deciding a fire's complexity, which can change amid developments ranging from fuel conditions and growth potential to risks to property and cultural resources.

Todd Abel, the deputy fire management officer with Arizona’s Department of Forestry and Fire Management, has been part of wildfire management teams for more than two decades. There have been years when he returned home from an assignment only to pack up and leave again two days later for another one. He recalled doing that eight or nine times one summer.

“That’s why they’re making more teams available for complex incident management,” he said.

In 2021, California marked its largest single wildfire. The Dixie Fire was active for more than three months and grew to 1,505 square miles (3,898 square kilometers). Nearly 2,000 personnel were assigned to that fire.

The following year in New Mexico, more than 3,000 people were assigned to fight the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, a conflagration sparked by two prescribed burns that escaped from forest managers. The largest and most destructive wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, it burned for more than four months before it was contained.

Aside from filling top command roles, recruitment of new wildland firefighters has been a priority across federal land management agencies. Many positions are seasonal, averaging six months. Some people don’t return while others are promoted — and both cases leave positions empty.

The Forest Service hopes to hire around 11,300 firefighters this year.

The lengthening of fire season also has changed the makeup of seasonal fire crews and permanent positions. Jeff Rupert, director of the U.S. Interior Department's Office of Wildland Fire, said that in years past, more than one-third of the workforce consisted of seasonal crew members. That number is decreasing as more permanent positions are required.

New recruits must complete wildland fire training and pass a basic fitness test.

An annual wildfire training academy in Prescott, Arizona, marked a record-setting year, with more than 1,000 people turning out in March for a week of classroom time and work in the field.

Dozens of students kicked up clouds of dust as they used tools to dig their first handline in a place where fire is simulated by pink tape tied to bushes. There wasn't any choking smoke or chainsaws ripping through the brush while helicopters thundered overhead. Still, the workshop provided students with an idea of what it's like to fight a wildfire.

Robertson said the first year for a firefighter is the most important.

“It’s when somebody determines whether this line of work is good for them,” he said. “It’s a lot of work where you don’t know where you’re going to be the next day. It’s very dynamic. A lot of unknowns.”

For top-level managers who orchestrate battles against the largest fires, there are new courses that some will have to take — now that Type 1 and Type 2 teams are being reconfigured to form new management teams for complex fires. Between 50 and 90 people will make up the teams, each with expertise in their particular fields.

Jesse Bender, chair of the Incident Workforce Development Group, said the change has to do more with the administrative process of how government agencies respond to wildfires. She called it an opportunity to better align the business of fighting wildfires so the public knows it's getting a highly trained and experienced group of people who can take care of firefighters on the ground and protect the things that communities value, including homes, wildlife, cultural landmarks and nature reserves.

“The bottom line," she said, "is we want to make sure we get enough people to all the fires to help those who need it.”

Associated Press writer Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

Wildfire academy students gather for instruction in a classroom, Monday, March 11, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. Forecasters are warning that the potential for wildfires will be above normal in some areas across the United States over the coming months as temperatures rise and rain becomes sparse. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Wildfire Academy students dig a handline, Monday, March 11, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. Forecasters are warning that the potential for wildfires will be above normal in some areas across the United States over the coming months as temperatures rise and rain becomes sparse. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Aravaipa Hotshot Patrick O'Donnell, left, instructs a Wildfire Academy student using a chainsaw, Monday, March 11, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. Forecasters are warning that the potential for wildfires will be above normal in some areas across the United States over the coming months as temperatures rise and rain becomes sparse. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Wildfire Academy student dig a handline, Monday, March 11, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. Forecasters are warning that the potential for wildfires will be above normal in some areas across the United States over the coming months as temperatures rise and rain becomes sparse. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

A Wildfire Academy student practices with a chainsaw Monday, March 11, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. Forecasters are warning that the potential for wildfires will be above normal in some areas across the United States over the coming months as temperatures rise and rain becomes sparse. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Aravaipa Hotshot Katie Williamson, left, instructs a Wildfire academy student using a chainsaw, Monday, March 11, 2024, in Prescott, Ariz. Forecasters are warning that the potential for wildfires will be above normal in some areas across the United States over the coming months as temperatures rise and rain becomes sparse. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A familiar scene has played out over and over in the U.S. House: Republicans, unable to approve federal funding legislation on their own, edge toward a risky government shutdown, until Democrats swoop in with the votes needed to prevent catastrophic disruptions.

Until now.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has accomplished the seemingly unexpected, keeping his GOP majority in line to pass a bill to keep the government running, convincing even the most staunch conservatives from the Freedom Caucus to come on board.

It wasn’t just President Donald Trump’s public badgering of the lawmakers and threats of political retribution against Republicans who refused to fall in line, although his sharp warnings resonated, preventing wide dissent.

What also won over rank-and-file Republicans was what Trump is already doing with the chainsaw-wielding billionaire Elon Musk — slashing the size of federal government and firing thousands of workers through the Department of Government Efficiency — and the White House’s promise to do more.

“In DOGE we trust,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., a longtime deficit hawk who was among those voting yes.

The result is a newly emboldened House GOP majority that, for the first time in years, is able to capture and utilize the vast power of sticking together, rather than disassembling into chaotic rounds of public infighting.

And it’s leaving the Democrats, in the minority in the House and Senate, shifting rapidly to respond.

The story the Democrats have leveraged to their advantage for years — that Republicans simply can’t govern — may no longer be as true as it once was.

In fact, the Republicans who control Congress and the White House are governing at lightning speed — over the dismantling of the very government itself.

As if on cue, as the House was acting Tuesday, the Department of Education axed some 1,300 employees, about half its staff, on its way to unwinding the agency.

“The DOGE efforts and the other things that are happening in the administration are very important for the American people,” Johnson said in a victory lap, “because ultimately what we’re going to be able to do is downsize the size and scope of the federal government.”

The bill now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 majority and Democrats are almost powerless to stop the head-spinning series of events.

“This is not what the American people want,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.

Schumer faces politically difficult options — either provide the Democratic votes needed to advance the bill to the 60-vote threshold needed, or vote to block it, allowing a federal shutdown after midnight Friday.

After conferring privately with Senate Democrats, Schumer announced they would try to force a vote on a shorter, 30-day bill. That would temporarily fund the government while negotiations continue. But it’s not at all clear Republicans would agree to that, inching closer to Friday’s shutdown deadline.

Lacking leverage to shape the funding package, the Democrats are left to warn what Trump and Musk will do next.

Trump is pushing the GOP-led Congress to next pass what he calls a “big beautiful bill” with some $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending reductions, including some $880 billion to Medicaid the health care program used by some 80 millions Americans and another $220 billion to agriculture programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, to hungry adults and kids.

Musk said that Social Security and other mainstay “entitlement” programs also need drastic cuts.

“The Republican majority just voted to hand a blank check to Elon Musk," said Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the Democratic whip.

“No wonder Republicans are canceling their town halls,” she said. "They know what the American people know: No one voted for this.”

For Republicans, particularly in the House, it’s a new day.

On Tuesday almost every House Republican — and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine — backed the government funding bill, which will keep federal offices running through the end of the budget year, in September.

The party was also unified last month as Johnson led House Republicans in approving a budget framework for the big tax-and-spending cuts bill, setting the process in motion for action as soon as April.

Johnson said the White House would be sending a rescissions package next — legislative shorthand for a proposal to roll back already-approved funding across the federal government.

Other Republicans are encouraging the Trump administration to impound other federal funds that have been approved by Congress, but not yet spent, setting up a potential legal showdown over the checks and balances of constitutional power.

For rank-and-file Republicans, the DOGE cuts that are steamrolling through the federal government are beyond what they could have imagined.

“Exhilarating,” Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, the head of the Republican campaign committee, told The Associated Press.

The most conservative deficit hawks said they are willing to stand down on their usual antics to block funding bills, knowing Trump and Musk are wielding the ax on their own.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who has routinely voted against government spending bills, said what’s changed is Trump in the White House. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who has rarely voted for any continuing resolution to fund the government, said the cuts are underway.

As long as DOGE is calling the shots, "I can support this CR,” said McClintock, referring the continuing resolution to fund the government.

The speaker said Trump is watching step by step. Trump berated the one Republican holdout on the funding package, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and was calling others.

Massie, the libertarian leaning MIT graduate who wears a homemade debt calculator on his lapel pin, is popular among his colleagues in part because he is so consistent in his views. He refused to bend.

Another holdout, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said he even though he didn't personally have a call from Trump, he was on the line when the president called another GOP lawmaker.

“I want him to succeed,” McCormick said.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., responds to questions from the House Rules Committee as the panel prepares a spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Sept. 30, at the Capitol, in Washington, Monday, March 10, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, asks a question as the House Rules Committee prepares a spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Sept. 30, at the Capitol, in Washington, Monday, March 10, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., meets with reporters as House Republicans push ahead with a go-it-alone strategy on an interim GOP spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Sept. 30, at the Capitol, in Washington, Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)