TUNGSTEN VALLEY - With our weather heating up in another CO2-driven climate-change season and Wildfire Awareness Month, we’ll soon be battling wildland fires. What’s the status of Peak to Peak firefighting preparedness?

The first line of defense is advance mitigation. These days, mountain dwellers need to have mitigation in their blood. This isn’t an option; it’s a life-or-death obligation to yourself, your neighbors, and our firefighters. If you don’t know how to mitigate, contact Wildfire Partners for no-cost, on-the-spot advice. (And if you do know what to do, why are you reading this article instead of sweating in the yard, getting the job done?)

The next line of defense is well-equipped, well-trained, experienced firefighting personnel. My firefighting contacts tell me their situation is not good. Why? Arbitrary mass firings and a near-cutoff in their ability to procure the gear and services they need.

A significant portion of the federal workforce has been summarily terminated by Cultural Revolution Muskrats, including many front-line firefighters and critically important support staff. Many of these people had reduced-protection “probationary” status when they were thrown into the street. The public might envision “probationaries” as youngsters fresh out of school, but that’s mostly incorrect. In the federal system, people are not promoted in their jobs. Instead, they develop their careers by being hired into new jobs with greater duties and responsibilities, even thought they might physically remain in the same office with the same co-workers.

So seasoned firefighters with years and decades of experience, who had the bad luck to have been moved into new job responsibilities in the last year (and thus were technically classed as “probationary”), were instantaneously fired without any thought or evaluations, not so much as a fare-thee-well, by ignorant people (themselves often actual youngsters) who knew literally nothing about what they were doing. Replacing them, someday, will be difficult or impossible. The damage that’s been done might be generational.

And it’s not just front-line personnel. Half of the National Forest Service’s procurement specialists have been fired. These are the people who set up labor contracts and buy firefighting materiel. Without them, fires won’t be fought. Lacking them, there are now only 39 Major Incident Management Teams available, whereas there are supposed to be 46.

Essential firefighting personnel, services, and hardware aren’t getting contracted or are moving too slowly for the fire season, I’m informed. Where there used to be a dozen bankcard holders in a given office, there are now one or even none. Workers can’t even buy copier paper and printer toner cartridges, or are on a months-long timeline, according to my contacts.

This is efficiency, we ask? Or is it the tearing-down of America, leaving all of us out on a limb, to service a few billionaires’ interests?

What will be the fall-out for all of us, here in the Peak to Peak area? We don’t know. But it’s not looking good.

The author can be contacted at Peak2PeakClimate@gmail.com.