r/Firefighting • u/JohannLandier75 Tennessee FF (Career) • Feb 08 '25

News Federal Hiring Freeze prevents on-boarding of wildland firefighters

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/08/us/firefighters-federal-hiring-freeze/index.html
196 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

143 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-7

u/OttoOtter Feb 09 '25

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/heres-how-doge-can-help-save-lives-money-from-wildfires

6

u/TheSavageBeast83 Feb 09 '25

I'm not a fox news subscriber, can you please explain?

-3

u/OttoOtter Feb 09 '25

Did you read the article? It's what Senator Sheehy wrote regarding his plan (and Trumps plan) for the federal fire organizations.

4

u/TheSavageBeast83 Feb 09 '25

No, I'm not a fox news subscriber

-1

u/OttoOtter Feb 09 '25

You know you can still read the article, right?

3

u/trogg21 Feb 09 '25

It requires you to sign in

5

u/TheSavageBeast83 Feb 09 '25

Except I can't, it literally says I need to be a subscriber

2

u/OttoOtter Feb 09 '25

Sheehy writes that private fire contractors are cheaper, more efficient and better at innovation than federal fire agencies.

He says that private contractors will be able to respond to remote wildfires within minutes of starts and that we should increase the public-private sector to promote more private fire companies.

As an aside, none of this is correct. Private type 2 crews, on average, cost more than 3xs as much as an established hotshot crew. They are slower, poorly trained, and often take well over 24 hours to muster enough crewmembers.

This, coupled with the Trump "fork in the road email" makes it abundantly clear what the direction the GOP is taking this.