President Trump insists The “rake” of the forest Other fuel reduction measures will help prevent wildfires from destroying the West. But his administration’s early actions frozen one of the key plans to accomplish such work, a pair of huge fires that destroyed the massive fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades in the Pacific .
The move has led to confusion among the U.S. Forest Services while the government signed a freeze of most federal recruitment in certain land administration blocks. Hiring some firefighters has been delayed.
A White House spokesman said the Interior Department, which oversees the BLM, is reviewing funding decisions to ensure they are consistent with Trump’s execution order. The review focused partly on spending approved under President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure laws and the inflation reduction bill.
A pair of firefighters union and dozens of Congress Democrats have condemned the Trump administration’s holdings of contract and employment delays, saying the actions ignore common sense, and Trump’s warnings about ways to reduce the threat of wildfires.
Two California Senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, join more than a dozen other Western senators Requires BLM to lift its fixation On the field “treatment” contract, private companies paid for brushes and trees in the Yihuo Power Zone.
Fifty-seven House members – including Jared Hoffman (D-San Rafael) and Scott Peters (D-San Diego) – joined the recovery of the fire prevention efforts and restored Recruiting firefighters for long-term inadequate forest services.
“It’s a slap. It’s total disrespectful. “Don’t they care about the work we’re doing? Does the government have no support from me? ”
California Professional Fire Staff President Brian K. Rice also felt frustrated, noting that nearly half of the state is federal land, including “the craziest and most flammable areas in our state.”
“President Trump recently admitted that vegetation management was the main driver of preventing devastating fires, so it was disappointing to see his orders to stop reducing fuel and recruit freezes,” firefighters and emergency medical staff. “Everyone has a good imagination after the destruction experience in Los Angeles County since the New Year.”
A White House spokesman downplayed the impact of the action in an interview with the Associated Press.
“Just because there is comment doesn’t mean there is no desire to complete the work,” said Deputy White House Press Secretary Harrison Fields. “Assisted oversight of the dollar is as important as ensuring the recovery of California.”
Fields also said: “There are no bigger advocates to restore California’s natural beauty, which is why he visited the area in his first week of office, and he continues to put a lot of pressure on the country and state local governments to reduce obstacles to restoring the area.”
McLaurine Pinover, spokesman for the Federal Office of Personnel Management, said Firefighters are exempt From the recruitment freeze, because they are public safety workers. A White House spokesman said the administration will “hire critical positions that will continue to protect public and tribal land, infrastructure and communities from wildfires to pass dangerous fuel management, wildfire preparation, wildfire preparation, and across the government Partners work closely together.”
But Gutierrez of the Federal Employees Union said he was told a group of workers planning to start on Sunday were told about their onboarding.
Firefighters’ representatives worry that any hiring in the hiring will exacerbate the long-term hardship to recruit employees to U.S. agencies. Federal firefighters usually receive much lower salaries than firefighters working in state and municipal agencies. In recent years, the captain, engine owner and others have been part of the massive Exodus.
Forest Service firefighters have lost 45% over the past four years, and Democratic senators urged the Trump administration to quickly clarify the situation “rather than being more uncertain by arbitrary freezes.”
Wildfire experts and elected officials have agreed to reduce the urgent need for fuel in the western mountains and hills.
Congress allocated more than $3 billion in work from infrastructure and legislation to reduce inflation, which could be as diverse as setting controlled burns, deploying goats to eat vegetation together or having crews hand-brushed as trees.
A company that works in Northern California Oregon Idaho told the Associated Press that it stopped Biden’s legislative funding and laid off 15 full-time employees.
“It just doesn’t make good business sense to keep operating, not knowing if we’re going to get paid or if at some point the administration is going to rescind some of this,” said Marko Bey, executive director of the Lomakatsi Restoration Project. He called it a “very challenging situation”.
The California Senator made a case for the work in his letter. It says in a way: “These fuel-reducing projects save lives and property, reduce danger to firefighters and return our land to a fire-adapted ecosystem to better withstand life to humans, communities , threats to infrastructure and property.”
Trump blamed California leaders on devastating wildfires in his first term as president last month since his removal from office last month. After Camp Fire destroyed much of California’s paradise in 2018, Trump called for more “rakes” on forest grounds to prevent future fires.
After the fire opened in Southern California this year, Trump made another claim roughly debunked by fire safety experts – firefighters don’t have enough water to lie because The state’s environmental policies waste water.
Experts say no system was designed to fight fires forged toward the suburbs, and almost all garden hoses and fire hydrants opened any system at the same time.
“Without the urgent corrective measures of this administration, we will be less secure, underprepared and more vulnerable to extreme wildfire threats,” House members said in a letter to Trump administration officials.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
