Few summer jobs offer students a chance to earn more money than fighting forest fires. Bruce Ferguson, president of Ferguson Management Company, a wild land firefighting company headquartered in Albany, Oregon, estimates that entry-level firefighters could earn $3,000 to $5,000 a month during peak fire season months of June, July and August.
According to Ferguson, his company prefers to hire college students. The reason we really like college students is that they are probably a couple of clicks in intelligence greater than the average person off the street,” he said. With many students taking at least four years to earn a degree, Ferguson figures that they “will be around for awhile,” giving the company a pool of experienced personnel every summer.
Becoming a wild land firefighter requires potential hires to attend a four day, 32 hour certification course. FMC, like most fire fighting companies, does not charge for the certification class but does not pay recruits for attending either. Ferguson says that attending the class is no guarantee of being hired. “We look at them and see how they are during the course. We rank them on who is going to be called up first,” he said.
While the course teaches basic fire behavior and safety Ferguson says the most important thing new firefighters can do to stay safe is “unplug their ears and listen (to the crew boss) when the fat hits the fire.
Once a new firefighter has his or her certification, they wait for a call up. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have their own fire crews but do to budget shortfalls are increasingly relying on private firms like FMC to provide the bulk of the manpower on large fires. “The government has told us we better be ready to go this year, because of the budget cuts their resources are gravely depleted,” Ferguson said.
When a dispatch comes from the National Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, FMC starts assembling 20-person crews to send to the fire. According to Ferguson, several of those slots will be filled by new firefighters. “Even if we have experienced people sitting we are still going to put five to seven new people on that crew because we need the new blood every year,” he said
Once the crews are on the fire line the hands on training and evaluation begins. “Once they get out there we really start training in earnest to see who can do what,” Ferguson said. Ferguson says the attrition rate for new firefighters is quite high. “I would guess that no more than half of the people that sign up and think they want to do it find out they really want to do it.”
He attributes the high dropout rate to the long hours, often 13 to 14 hours a day, and the weeks at a time spent away from home. When not on duty fire crews return to a fire support camp for food, showers and down time. The sleeping quarters is a spot of bare ground where the crews can throw down a sleeping bag and a tent. I think the hours and the fact you have no life except fire when you go to fires is the thing you lose a lot of people over,” Ferguson said.
To contain a fire crews dig fire trails, ground several feet wide cleared of any flammable material, in front of and on the sides of the fire. The idea being that when the fire reaches the fire trail it will stop its advance because of the lack of fuel. Digging fire trail entails hours bent over chopping and digging, often on steep terrain and in high temperatures. Ferguson concedes it is hard work overall but doesn’t believe the job is too difficult. “In stretches it’s damn hard work but your only working what I consider really hard three or four hours a day. There is a lot of dead time,” he said, adding, “being out working 13 hours a day is strenuous even if you aren’t working hard.”
For those who take to the fire fighting life, advancement and significant pay increases are available. In their second season, fire fighters are eligible to be squad bosses and in three to five years they can be a crew boss. Ferguson said that during a busy fire season FMC crew bosses make between $6,000 and $10,000 a month. Firefighters who started while college find the pay lucrative enough to take a month or two off from their professional jobs to fight fire according to Ferguson
“We like to provide upward mobility for those people that are sharper than the average person. It’s good for us,” he said.
Fire crews can find themselves dispatched anywhere in the United States. The first big fires of the year are often in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California. Since crews must drive to fires, there is a high demand for fire fighters with clean driving records. While the crew is not paid while traveling to a fire, the drivers are. Often drivers make more per hour for driving than they do while battling fires. “One of the things you can never have too much of in this profession is drivers,” Ferguson said.
Because of vehicle accidents in other companies that claimed the lives of several firefighters in recent years FMC takes vehicle safety seriously. All drivers are alcohol tested before the crew leaves and rest to driving time regulations are strictly enforced. Ferguson said that he prefers to use crew cab trucks instead of vans for transporting his crews, feeling that they are safer. When vans are used, they receive extensive modification to the front end, never carry equipment on top and are never filled to capacity with passengers.
A proliferation of contract fire fighting companies since the government first started using private contractors for forest fires in 1988 led to a change in the way crews are dispatched staring in 2006. In past years, companies submitted bids and when crews were needed they were called up starting with the lowest bidders. According to Ferguson, this led to a wide disparity in crew quality and capabilities. Ferguson said this led to farm labor contractors being dispatched before professional fire crews. New contracting rules require that companies submit bids with a complete history of who they are, company details and experience. Under this dispatch system price will only count toward twenty-percent of a contractor’s dispatch ranking.
Fire season can start as early as April in the South West, so contract fire companies began accepting applications and recruiting new hires in early spring.
