Harger: Washington’s wildland firefighters deserve year-round jobs. Congress could make it happen
Sep 4, 2026, 7:34 AM | Updated: 3:09 pm
We’re a week out from the 25th anniversary of September 11. I’ve been going through some heavy material for a piece I’m working on for next week, and it’s put me in a certain frame of mind.
It’s gotten me thinking about the people who run toward the fire.
My brother, my brother-in-law, and the guys who run toward it
My brother spent years as a volunteer firefighter. My brother-in-law has been a professional firefighter for a long time. These are the guys who will do whatever it takes to keep a neighborhood safe: structure fires, car wrecks, medical calls, the whole grim menu of a bad day.
Then there’s a special breed within that world — the wildland firefighter.
What I saw at the base camps in central Washington
For years, part of my job sent me out to central Washington to cover wildfires. I’d go to a field somewhere near the fire line and end up at a base camp. I’d spend the day there.
You’d see these guys run ragged. Just about every waking hour, they’re on the front lines trying to stop the spread. Then they’d head back to camp, sleep in a one-person tent in the heat of summer, and get back at it again first thing the next morning. Day after day, for weeks.
Ten days ago I saw it again, this time as a dad on a family camping trip instead of a reporter on deadline. We were camping lakeside at Lake Chelan, and we watched planes and helicopters scoop water straight out of the lake and dump it on a fire a few miles away. They came back a dozen times in a single night. We drove past a base camp set up in a nearby pasture, tents packed close together in the dirt.
The smoke hung in the air like a haze in the morning. One afternoon you could taste it.
What Washington’s DNR actually pays wildland firefighters
Here’s what that work is worth on paper. Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) posts its seasonal wildland firefighter jobs at roughly $21 to $23 an hour to start.
That’s entry-level pay for work that can get you killed.
It’s hot, dirty, dangerous work, and we pay it like a summer gig, because that’s exactly how we treat it.
Every fall, the layoffs happen right on schedule
In about two months, most of these crews will be laid off. It happens every single year.
The job is treated as seasonal. When fire season winds down, they’re out looking for whatever comes next. Some come back the following summer. Plenty don’t. They find something steadier, something that pays better and doesn’t vanish every October.
And it’s not like the off-season leaves them nothing to do. Washington’s forests desperately need land management, thinning overgrown stands, clearing dead brush, doing the work in January that keeps a lightning strike from becoming a 160,000-acre fire in August. There’s no shortage of work. There’s a shortage of a paycheck attached to it.
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Maybe we ask the federal government for funding
This costs money, and Washington state doesn’t have much of it lying around right now. So here’s where I think there’s an actual opening.
President Trump has talked for years about cleaning up Western forests, raking the forest floors, all of it. Fine. Take him up on it.
Republican Congressman Michael Baumgartner represents the district that just watched Spokane burn. Democratic Congresswoman Kim Schrier has already put her name on wildfire and forest health bills this year. Put the two of them together on something bigger: permanent federal funding for a year-round Western wildland firefighting workforce. Not a summer gig with a pink slip attached. A real job.
Whatever it costs, I think the return shows up fast. Steady, good-paying work in rural counties like Okanogan, Chelan, and Stevens. Healthier forests. Fewer homes and businesses burned to the ground. Cleaner air in August instead of a haze that sits over half the state.
The president gets to say he cleaned the forests, because this time somebody actually got paid to do it. The governor gets to point to a jobs program and lower wildfire carbon emissions. Everybody involved gets a win they can put their name on.
But mostly, this is about the people themselves. The volunteer firefighters like my brother. The career firefighters like my brother-in-law. And the wildland crews sleeping in one-person tents in 95-degree heat, doing work most of us wouldn’t last a week at.
We’re lucky they’re willing to do it. The job doesn’t stop mattering in September. Neither should the paycheck.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
