r/Wildfire • u/JournalistJeremy • 20h ago

News (General) Forest Service Layoffs Push Firefighters to Clean Toilets and Mow Lawns

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7ZLo68INTIc&t=4s
45 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

68

u/Spiritual_Green_7757 20h ago

We’ve been doing that the whole time lol

37

u/Mkreza538 20h ago

I gotta mow the lawn this afternoon, matter fact

They might should also address the fact that my station’s engine has been in the shop for 3 years because they cant get funding to fix the motor so we’ve been using rotating reserve engines for 3 years.

30

u/Spiritual_Green_7757 20h ago

I’m sending this from the riding mower I’ve been using since Obama was in office 

7

u/Mkreza538 20h ago

We did just get 2 new weed whips tho. Guess they’re figuring our landscaping duties will be more long term necessities than an engine

4

u/No-Grade-4691 15h ago

Just put it all in the wex card mate

1

u/Mkreza538 15h ago

I feel silly for not thinking about that

7

u/xj98jeep 19h ago

I fucked up the landscaping at color country dispatch so badly like 10 years ago. Handcrew prepo, they had us grid the lot for trash,then got us into landscaping. I warned them we weren't landscapers, they said take a whack at it anyway. You get what you pay for

5

u/Punch_Drunk_AA Desk Jockey FOS 18h ago

I was qualified to run a weed eater before I was a chainsaw.

5

u/Merced_Mullet3151 20h ago

Was doing that in 1978 on the Six Rivers (“the asbestos forest”) though admittedly it was a slow fire year.

18

u/Larix_Thuja 19h ago

Cutting the grass at the ranger district is fuels work.

7

u/Acrobatic-Plum1364 15h ago

Firefighters have been cleaning toilets and mowing lawns and everything else well before these layoffs  

3

u/BustedEchoChamber 9h ago

I think the overall strategy for the next several years will be designed to portray the job as a waste of taxpayer money. The goal here is to convince people that contractors are better than government employees

5

u/Ready-Ad6113 19h ago

Maybe they can get ICE and the national guard to help.

2

u/Turd-ferguson15 12h ago

Been doing that shit a long time

2

u/BigWhiteDog 10h ago

Uhhhhh I've been doing this since 1977...

1

u/burgers3tacos 12h ago

Forestry Techs. They can technically do whatever the agency tells them to do. Least until they go under the DOI.

1

u/Past-Garlic-519 1h ago

This article is a little late, by like a 100 years lol

-2

u/YOLO_Bundy 14h ago

FakeNews

0

u/BatSniper 15h ago

Gotta get OT somehow.