Wildfires across the West have left a national group unable to fill all local requests for firefighting help and have plunged resources to a “critically low” level, according to memos by a federal group that coordinates national fire response.
The National Multi-Agency Coordinating Center said in an Aug. 14 memo that it cannot “provide all requested resources for every fire” and on Aug. 11 said there is “no immediate relief anticipated.” The center helps agencies cooperate on wildfire response and dispatches people, equipment and firefighting aircraft to state and local fire firefighting crews that need help.
The memo indicates that longer, more intense wildfire seasons are testing the country’s response system, which relies on federal and state authorities sharing fire personnel and equipment. It also comes a year after President Donald Trump shrank the federal firefighting workforce, a move opposed by fire experts.
WIldfire has burned 7.3 million acres in 2026, the most in any year through August 18, according to National Interagency Fire Center daily records that begin in 1994. The annual average through August 18 is 4.3 million acres burned.
There is “intense competition” for firefighting assets, Charles Russell, who chairs the federal coordinating group, wrote in an Aug. 11 memo. Russell is the deputy chief for fire operations at the U.S. Wildland Fire Service.
The shortage means local fire teams can’t extinguish all the fires they face, which allows the blazes to grow larger and more intractable, said Dan Carroll, a former Minnesota firefighter who now works in the private sector.
Trump last year directed federal agencies to consolidate firefighting personnel. He fired 3,400 employees from the U.S. Forest Service, the government’s main firefighting agency. Administration officials said frontline firefighters were spared and that the workforce is adequate.
But fire experts said that the firings decimated the ranks of older, experienced officials whose knowledge is valuable against increasingly large, complex fires.
“These require the most seasoned and experienced managers. And we lost a lot of them last year” to the budget cuts, said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology and a former firefighter for federal agencies. “We are just now seeing the impact of that.”
“We lost decades and decades of knowledge,” said Camille Stevens-Rumann, director of the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute and a former wildland firefighter.
Demand for firefighting personnel and equipment often surges in summer. But fire conditions have driven competition for those resources to the highest level possible — Preparedness Level 5, according to the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group. A normal August is at Level 4.
Seventy-six large fires were uncontained Tuesday, federal authorities say. Many are in the Northwest, where a combination of heat, dryness and wind are helping fires outnumber and overpower local fire teams.
When a fire becomes too large or complex to handle, local authorities call on the federal network, which can dispatch firefighters and equipment from other regions.
This year, a key bottleneck is the shortage of specialized fire teams that are scrambled to the largest and most complex fires in the nation, the coordinating group said in a memo.
The volunteer teams of at least 24 people include veteran or retired firefighters who set strategy for battling a wildfire. They can come from federal, state, local, tribal or territorial agencies.
The teams include medical, safety and logistics experts — everyone needed to establish a temporary firefighting army of thousands in a remote area, said Stevens-Rumann of Colorado.
This year, 38 teams are on standby. But recent surges in fire activity have brought periods in which all are committed, said the group’s Aug. 14 memo.
Challenging fires are forcing teams to work in one place for longer than planned, delaying their redeployment to other places that need them, the memo said.
Fire experts have warned for years that the national workforce for responding to wildfires is underresourced and overworked. A federal commission on wildfire management described it in 2023 as “a system on the brink.”
Russell, who chairs the federal coordination group, urged field teams to conserve their energy.
“Deliberate decisions about where, when, and how to engage are essential,” his memo said. “Urgency should never compromise safety.”
