Lives are potentially more at risk because long-term vacancies within the North Carolina Forest Service (NCFS) are making wildfires harder to fight, an official has told Newsweek.
NCFS mountain division director Michael Cheek said chronic understaffing will mean: "We will have larger fires, more structures will burn. Hopefully, no one dies."
Why It Matters
Earlier this month, wildfires erupted across North Carolina amid an abundance of dry fuels. There are excessive amounts of downed timber in the state's forests after Hurricane Helene tore through the region last September. Strong winds and dry conditions aided the spread of the fires, and as of Tuesday, the NCFS continues to battle the blazes of four active wildfires.
Three of the fires are located in Polk County in the western part of the state that was hit hardest by Hurricane Helene.
What to Know
Cheek told Newsweek that it is more difficult for the NCFS to combat the flames because the agency is "understaffed and underbudgeted."
Statewide, the NCFS is averaging 100 vacancies, with an average of 25 vacancies in western North Carolina over the past five years.
"We have a tremendous recruitment retention issue in North Carolina," Cheek said.
The biggest hurdle to employee retention is low salaries.
"Salaries are far below market value, and we can't keep employees. We can't get trained employees and experienced employees, and that makes it difficult," Cheek said. "I am continuously sharing that story with our legislators in hopes of salary adjustment funds to raise our people to salaries they can live on."
However, no recent legislation has offered a solution to the issue, Cheek said. Of the Hurricane Helene funding bills that have been proposed, none have addressed the NCFS concerns.
Cheek added that for some entry level positions in the NCFS, if the staff member is married and has a child, the salary is so low they could be eligible for government assistance.
"To me, as a manager, that's highly disappointing," he said.
What makes the situation even more difficult is the 822,000 acres of damaged woodlands in North Carolina from Hurricane Helene.
The excessive availability of fuels makes it "very difficult" for NCFS crews, because they cannot cut through the debris in an efficient manner, Cheek said. Instead, the NCFS has to find areas not laden with debris to establish their perimeter, which makes the fires larger.
"There have been numerous examples over the last month and a half where a standard 1-acre fire has become a 10- or 20-acre fire and a standard 10-acre fire has been 165 acres," Cheek said. More resources and more people are required to control the flames.
What People Are Saying
Cheek told Newsweek: "I'm hoping in the long session of the state budget this year somebody will seriously look at our issues and look at what we're going to have to deal with for the next 10, 15, 20 years and properly set us up for success. Currently, we are set up to not succeed."
What Happens Next
Multiple states across the U.S. have sent resources to aid the NCFS in combatting the fires. The U.S. Forest Service also is providing resources, Cheek said.
