With wildfire season getting longer, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is advocating not only for increased pay for firefighters, but also as a year-round salary.
After a briefing on the Lookout, Bedrock, and Salmon fires with forest officials Monday in Springfield, Wyden suggested to reporters that he’ll look into firefighter salaries when he’s back on Capitol Hill.
“You’ve heard us talk about it as a temporary bump,” said Wyden. “Let me add to that today: I’ve seen this summer who urgent it is to make these firefighters professional, available, year-round. It can’t just be for a few months in the hot weather season. And that means it’s going to cost something, but I’ll tell you, we can’t afford not to do it.”
A short-term pay increase for more than 16,000 federal wildfire workers is set to expire at the end of September.
A burning economic toll
With wildfires growing more intense and frequent, officials say Oregon stands to take an economic hit as well as an environmental one.
Wildfires can not only burn down communities and destroy infrastructure, they can also close off trails, recreational sites, and scare off tourists.
Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch said this has been very true for the McKenzie River Corridor, where summers have typically brought scores of outdoor enthusiasts and tourists. But incidents like the Lookout Fire have affected that usual turnout.
“When we have to close large areas of recreation, this closes some tourism opportunities,” Buch told KLCC. “And there are employees that live up there, we want them to stay up there, we want the McKenzie to grow, rebuild, and recover. We need that economic vitality.”
And no one wants a repeat of the 2020 Labor Day Fires, considered the worst wildfire season on record for Oregon. A report by the Oregon Forest Resources Institute shows nearly $6 billion in economic impact from those fires.
