Elinor Smith: Research into the on-duty deaths and long-term health of firefighters has been cut under the Trump Administration. Investigative journalist Mark Olalde wrote for ProPublica about the impact of these cuts ahead of fire season. He's here with me now in the studio. Mark, thank you so much for being here today.
Mark Olalde: Of course, thanks for having me.
Elinor Smith: Of course. You reported that Trump laid off most of the federal workers who investigate firefighter deaths. Can you explain what exactly these workers do?
Mark Olalde: Yeah, so this is the team at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. And there was until recently an eight member team who anytime there was a line of duty death, anywhere in the fire service — could be domestic, could be residential, military, wildland firefighting — the fire department that had this death could go in and ask this team to investigate what went wrong. After they concluded their investigation, they would make a point of sending the report to the family first so the family could get some semblance of closure, get some idea of what happened to their loved one who died in the line of duty. And then this team would make this report public for any fire agency to check and to see if their standard operating procedures needed to be fixed to make sure that this type of accident never happened again.
Elinor Smith: What did you hear from the Administration about the reason for cuts that had been made to that department?
Mark Olalde: Not a whole lot. When I went to the White House, when I went to HHS, when it went to NIOSH seeking comment, I was not told a lot. What I was told was that congressionally mandated programs would not be lost as part of these cuts, as they are enshrined in law. When I followed up with them and said, well, how do you continue a congressionally mandated program when you fire all the people doing said program? They stopped responding. So we really are in the dark right now about what if any of these programs will really continue.
Elinor Smith: So looping back to that department that investigates firefighter deaths, what did they say about their ability to continue doing their jobs?
Mark Olalde: So, that was an eight member team, and on that team, seven of the eight members received some sort of termination since the Trump Administration came into power. And there were 20 outstanding deaths investigations that were ongoing. I spoke with a member of that team who said that the field work had been done for many of them and we were in the kind of compiling the research and writing the report stage. This member of the team, who was also let go, told me that they're not very hopeful that this will happen. And at this point of those 20, this person expects that zero will be published.
Elinor Smith: We're having this conversation in early May at the time of recording, and in states like Montana, that means we're headed into fire season. Do you know how these cuts might impact firefighters' ability to respond to wildfires this year?
Mark Olalde: I've been covering the preparation for wildland fire season in the West, and I would say I'm concerned, to say the least. Positions that are integral to IT, to aviation, things like that in the wildland firefighting force have not been filled, and we have vacancies in key posts. Prescribed burns across the country that were supposed to be lit to reduce flammable vegetation in advance of fire season, a number of those have been canceled due to travel freezes or funding freezes, or any number of reasons. It's been more difficult to hire wildland firefighters in the lead up to a fire season when you really need to staff up into the thousands of firefighters. You know, so all of these things put together really put us in a precarious state in terms of preparedness for wildland fire season. And that's before you even think about the fact that wildfire season is getting longer due to climate change. And the fact that this really wasn't a great snowpack year in the West. And so are we going to see catastrophic wildfires with a force that is more disorganized to fight it than usual? I can almost guarantee it.
Elinor Smith: Well, Mark, thank you so much for being here today to speak with us about your reporting and break this issue down.
Mark Olalde: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.
Elinor Smith: Of course.
