A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Western states had one of the driest winters on record, and now the summer fire season's off to a fast start. Dozens of fires have forced tens of thousands to evacuate. Four firefighters have died. Chris Clements with member station KNAU in Flagstaff, Arizona, reports on how the federal government is responding.
CHRIS CLEMENTS, BYLINE: Across the West, a lot of people are having experiences like Tristan Herrick (ph).
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CLEMENTS: At a gas station in the Ponderosa Forest near Flagstaff, he recently watched white smoke drift overhead. About 25 miles away, the pocket fire was burning out of control.
TRISTAN HERRICK: It's terrifying. I mean, you save up for years and try to get somewhere in life and then something like this happens. It sucks. There's panic stirring. There's an uneasy feeling. No one knows what's going to happen.
CLEMENTS: More than 17,000 people are now assigned to teams fighting 46 large, uncontained fires across the country. Last week, the federal government activated military air tankers to help - an indicator that private contractors have reached capacity. And late last month, the National Interagency Fire Center raised the country's preparedness level to four on a scale of one to five.
RIVA DUNCAN: We've had other early years like this, but it's never a good thing.
CLEMENTS: Riva Duncan is a retired federal firefighter and president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit advocacy group. She thinks it won't be long until firefighters from neighboring countries like Canada are called in to help. Climate change means wildfires are getting larger and more destructive in recent years, and fire seasons are lasting longer. And after DOGE made staffing cuts to the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, Duncan says federal agencies are unprepared. People in her organization who've been on duty tell her...
DUNCAN: That they have engines sitting because they don't have enough staffing. They have crew numbers down. They have engines that aren't available seven days because they don't have enough people.
CLEMENTS: Earlier this year, federal officials said their firefighting agencies are fully staffed, but the U.S. Wildland Fire Service did not respond to NPR's request for an interview for this story. The U.S. Forest Service - long the nation's lead wildfire response agency - declined an interview as well, citing in an email the number of ongoing fires and staff supporting those fires.
DUNCAN: My organization has been frustrated because we feel like they haven't been forthcoming with the number of actual boots-on-the-ground firefighters.
CLEMENTS: Duncan says federal fire agencies have faced problems for years - understaffing, aging facilities and layoffs.
DUNCAN: So the DOGE cuts don't help. It's just another straw - waiting to see if it'll break the camel's back.
CLEMENTS: So far this summer, hundreds of homes have burned down in Colorado, Utah currently has two very large fires throwing ash in the sky, and this week, Minnesota's governor declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to help fight 17 fires in his state. Meteorologists predict a strengthening El Nino weather pattern could deliver hotter, drier weather in parts of the West this summer. That means more Americans will likely be watching the skies, like Tristan Herrick at the gas station outside Flagstaff.
HERRICK: You could see the huge plume. The gigantic plume was kind of scary. The gravity is real this time.
CLEMENTS: With many more weeks of summer ahead, more than 3.6 million acres have already burned in wildfires in the U.S. this year. That's a million more than the average number for the last 10 years.
For NPR News, I'm Chris Clements in Flagstaff.
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