Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema met with Northern Arizona fire chiefs Tuesday to discuss concerns over workforce capacity at a time when wildfires are growing in size and severity. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports.
Flagstaff and Coconino County fire chiefs spoke about their struggle to recruit and retain firefighters and related staff, in part because of low pay and dangerous working conditions.
Temporary pay raises were introduced in 2021 but expire at the end of September. The bipartisan Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act sponsored by Sinema would make those increases permanent.
In the long term, Sinema says, she wants more investment in mitigation.
"The more money and time and effort and skill we spend to do prescribed fires, managed burns, taking care of the landscape…the more you invest in that, the less devastating natural fires will be," she says.
The fire chiefs also spoke with Sinema about bureaucratic obstacles to interagency collaboration. They say they have more authority to act when suppressing fires—for example, by bringing in the Arizona Department of Transportation to manage smoke impacts—than they do when managing or prescribing them.
