Improving Protections for Wildland Firefighters

Dr. DuBose looks at a smoke column while working on a wildland fire assignment in Colorado in July 2024. Photo by Stephanie Vela, U.S. Forest Service.  

BY JESSICA GARDETTO AND DR. KAT DUBOSE

Even from a distance, the sound of the fire was familiar: the distant, low rumbling of a freight train mixed with background sounds of helicopters and other equipment working on the fireline. The head of a large wildfire burns like a temper as if the flames have an unrelenting anger toward the vegetation in front of them. It moves faster than a person can run, creating a black column of smoke so large that it casts an apocalyptic shadow over the sun.  

In August 2024, Dr. DuBose watched the smoke column in between digging in the ashes. Assigned to the Bucktail Fire in Colorado, she served on a hand crew working to secure the fireline with hand tools. As she and her fellow firefighters grubbed in the ashes to extinguish hot spots on the fireline, she reflected on her broader mission as the Environmental and Occupational Health Program Director for the Federal Wildland Firefighter Health and Wellbeing Program—expanding knowledge of the fire environment and improving protections for those working to save lives, communities, and natural resources.

Wildland firefighting has changed significantly over the last 30 to 40 years, more so than many other professions in the U.S. Longer, more intense fire years result in more complex and intense wildland fire environments, with environmental hazards like the smoke column Dr. DuBose watched on the Bucktail Fire in Colorado. As professionals study and evaluate the changing wildland fire environment, they’re learning even more about how to mitigate these hazards, including how to train wildland firefighters to better recognize potential risks and act to protect themselves further.

To support these efforts, Dr. DuBose and others created a baseline that officially recognizes and classifies hazards faced by fire personnel and identifies current best practices for mitigating them.

In 2023, Dr. DuBose led a team of subject matter experts to define over 30 environmental hazards—physical, chemical, biological, or workplace-related, whether naturally occurring or human-made. The hazards were outlined in a July 2024 memo from the National Wildfire Coordination Group (NWCG).

“Of course, wildland firefighters know many hazards exist in the wildland environment; they’re trained to recognize hazards of all types and are very adept at mitigating them,” said Dr. DuBose. “This was a way for us to classify hazards better and identify protection measures in a rapidly changing wildland fire environment.”

They also identified proven strategies—many in use for decades—and aligned them with specific hazards, creating a foundational framework to guide future research and improve firefighter protection. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for the diverse and dynamic hazards of the wildland fire environment, this work provides a critical starting point for tailoring protective approaches to evolving conditions.

“Identifying these hazards gives us the foundation to further study wildland fire environmental hazards of all types, with the goal of learning more about them and thus how to mitigate them even further to improve firefighter health and wellbeing,” Dr. Dubose added.

The Federal Wildland Firefighter Health and Wellbeing Program established an environmental and occupational health initiative to better understand and prevent hazardous exposures that may impact short- and long-term firefighter health. Dr. DuBose and her team’s work offers a critical baseline to evaluate current protections and guide future recommendations for keeping firefighters safe amid increasingly extreme wildfire activity. 

Dr. Kat DuBose is the Environmental and Occupational Health Program Director for the Federal Wildland Firefighter Health and Wellbeing Program with the Office of Wildland Fire.

Jessica Gardetto is a Public Affairs Specialist with Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire.