Musk's freeze includes firefighters

[PAL]

Wow, that is dang high David. We paid about $5000 last year and will pay $6000 this year. We have been through one fire to boot and Safeco replaced the roofs(retardant) and even paid for aspens, that we didn't know were covered. if there is a fire they send out a crew to look at our place and to help with any mitigation. Safeco also sends us a rebate about 2 times a year. Our square footage is around 2000.

[Rideback]

I have spent a fair amt of time googling and can't find any articles on the insurance companies pushing back on the firefighter hiring freeze. Clearly without aid from the full force of Federal resources there will be more land, residences and businesses burned...most of which will be covered, at least for the moment, by insurance which will be left holding a very large bag. When Farmer's filed their lawsuit some years ago up in Chicago where they declared that every municipality cared a level of responsibility to maintain infrastructure such that it would provide security for homeowners as well as insurers, they won the litigation.

No doubt there is a level of responsibility that the Fed'l govt historically carries to protect its citizens.
https://www.instagram.com/jacobsoboroff ... xbQyHJn4n/

[mister_coffee]

Full disclosure: my homeowner's insurance bill this year was almost $19,000. I'm at the sharp and sh*t end of the stick here, but those numbers are coming for all of us sooner or later.

Good luck on buying and selling homes you can't insure. And if you can't sell the home it is worthless so if you think a lot of your net worth is in your home you have a problem on your hands.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/opin ... a0cc51e438

[PAL]

We will surely try. If embers get inside the house and one house goes in a crowded neighborhood, that's all it takes. Look around Twisp and
Winthrop and there is alot that can be done this spring and summer. It requires physical work and not necessarily money. We have plenty of people around here that if needed, could take down trees that are way too close to houses. To pay them, a general fund could be created. Or if things are getting desparate, you help your fellow neighbors after getting your own act together.
One thing I noticed here is that we evacuate much earlier than they did down in CA, it seems like. Is this a way to live? We pack up stuff when it starts getting very dry and put it in the garage, ready to be put in the car, or actually load the car if a fire is say 8-10 miles away. This is just what we do, every year now. We nub everything down, since we can't water our whole spread. We dig out around every structure with a Pulaski to bare dirt about 2' out.
Again, embers entering the house is what usually causes the house to burn, according to the firefighters that have come to our house. We know the drill now. If we think we're going to burn, we leave in time.
Of course, the firestorms we see in CA cannot be stopped. So this is where the experience of firefighters does come in, in that they can try to guide it, like in the Cedar Cr. fire where they guided it into Little Bridge Cr. Pine Forest was in great jeopardy with the winds at 30 mph on the Patterson Lk. side. No wind on our side. I don't know how the firefighters were able to stop it at the line the FS had. Perhaps the wind shifted and thank goodness it did.

[Rideback]

Meanwhile, Musk will use the tax dollars you have already invested in the Fed'l workforce to offset the tax breaks Trump is giving the oligarchs and giant corps rather than fight the fires they promised to protect us from. The valley won't have firefighters here to help keep the local economy afloat. Insurance companies will raise rates even more because the Fed'l assistance to protect homes will be MIA. Fires these days are burning even faster and hotter than they did when the Carlton complex hit us. Neighbors banding together won't be enough to stop them.

[PAL]

All citizens in the Methow Valley will be learning firefighting techniques. Learn what needs to be done. Get some fire fighting clothing. Get the equipment. We bought fire hose to hook up to our cistern should the power go out.Each and every person really needs to firewise their homes. It may mean thinning out and cutting some trees down. Our firefighters around here are mostly volunteers. And we can help those volunteers. Fifty people from the town of Twisp fought the 2015 fire outside of town. Granted planes dropped retardant but those folks, working toether helped save the town.
Let's get 'er done.
As far as forest fires, well, we may not be able to help much there.

[Rideback]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tr ... rcna191001

The beginning of the article:
LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration’s federal hiring freeze has stopped the onboarding of thousands of seasonal federal firefighters, including those who work for agencies called on to help battle the devastating Los Angeles-area fires, creating a potential shortfall of firefighters ahead of the next fire season.

Even though President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order says the freeze does not apply to positions related to “public safety,” federal firefighters are not exempt, according to a person who works in hiring at the Bureau of Land Management.

The U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service employ more than 15,000 career and temporary seasonal firefighters who perform fuel management, fight wildland fires and assist other jurisdictions in emergencies as part of the National Incident Management System.

In at least one field office for the Bureau of Land Management, a division of the Interior Department, officials involved in annual hiring were instructed in an email reviewed by NBC News to “hold all offers related to fire positions” because of the freeze.

The agency “was already in the middle of hiring their summer [fire] workforce when the federal hiring freeze came down,” a federal hiring manager in Utah told NBC affiliate KSL in Salt Lake City.

Towards the end: 'Sergio Gor, the White House director of presidential personnel, told Fox News, referring to the freeze but not firefighters specifically, that “the hiring freeze in place is enabling us to vet new people coming in and to other positions, also, but you have to clean house. Look, it’s one of those things.”

There you have it, to Trump/Musk it's JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS

Another BLM official involved in hiring said, “The level of stupidity and negligence here is enraging.”

“What if there’s nobody to show up? How many people died with garden hoses in their hands?” the person said. “The people making these decisions — they’re not the ones whose houses are going to burn down.”

Hiring federal firefighters is a lengthy process because of federal background checks, and any delay in the process raises concerns about an understaffed federal firefighting force, especially in the aftermath of the Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles County, which killed at least 29 people and destroyed or damaged more than 18,000 structures, wiping out entire neighborhoods.

“Federal firefighters are the backbone of protecting public safety and putting fires out in the state of California,” Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said Thursday. “Any lack of hiring puts both federal forested land and California citizens at risk.”