America's Fire Problem Needs More Than a New Agency

When the Los Angeles wildfires tore through neighborhoods in 2025, they exposed more than vulnerable homes and inadequate water pressure. They revealed a firefighting system so tangled in bureaucracy that even determining which agency leads the response becomes a crisis within the crisis.

The Department of the Interior thinks it has found the answer: a new Wildland Fire Service that would consolidate disparate firefighting efforts across 693 million acres of federal land. But as Congress withholds funding and experts raise concerns, the question isn't whether America needs better wildfire management—it's whether reshuffling the organizational chart will actually make fires less deadly.

The Bureaucratic Web That Burns

Currently, wildfire response resembles a complex relay race where runners keep dropping the baton. Within the Interior Department alone, multiple divisions handle fire operations: the Office of Wildland Fire, the National Park Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. Meanwhile, the US Forest Service—which conducts most federal firefighting—sits in an entirely different department under Agriculture.

This fragmentation costs more than efficiency. Over the past five years, the federal government has spent an average of $2.4 billion annually fighting wildfires. David Calkin, a wildfire consultant and former Forest Service scientist, describes the current system as "strained close to the breaking point" with "a heavily bureaucratic intergovernmental process that is not agile to the rapidly increasing complexity of fires."

The new service, led by veteran fire chief Brian Fennessy, aims to streamline these efforts under one roof. The Interior Department requested $6.55 billion to launch the initiative, but Congress declined to fund it in January's spending package, citing the need for changes across multiple federal departments.

The Suppression Trap

Here's where good intentions might create new problems. The proposed Wildland Fire Service emphasizes its "primary purpose and mission" as wildland fire suppression. But decades of fire suppression have actually worsened the wildfire crisis by allowing vegetation to accumulate and preventing natural burning cycles that keep ecosystems healthy.

Timothy Ingalsbee, director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, warns that "waiting around for a wildfire during these hot, dry, windy conditions that are becoming more frequent due to climate change, we'll never get ahead of the problem."

The math is sobering: government estimates show 100 million acres of federal land need fuel treatments to reduce fire dangers, but only 1 to 3 million acres receive this mitigation work annually. Creating another suppression-focused agency might actually divert resources from the unglamorous but crucial work of forest thinning, controlled burns, and vegetation management.

When Wildfires Become Urban Fires

The nature of wildfires has fundamentally changed, creating challenges that no federal agency—new or old—can solve alone. The Los Angeles fires exemplified this shift: they weren't forest fires that spread to communities, but urban conflagrations where homes themselves became the primary fuel.

Christopher Dunn, a former wildland firefighter now at Oregon State University, explains the dilemma: "The fires are faster and more intense and just fundamentally different than they were 30 years ago." Municipal firefighters train to enter burning structures and rescue people. Wildland firefighters focus on breaking up fuel lines in forests and grasslands. But hybrid urban-wildland fires demand entirely new tactics.

Even more challenging, only 20 percent of wildfires ignite on federal land, meaning most initial responses come from state and local agencies. The Forest Service represents 70 to 75 percent of federal suppression capacity, but federal agencies often arrive after local firefighters have been battling blazes for hours or days.

The Political Wildcard

President Trump's response to the Los Angeles fires—threatening to withhold federal disaster aid from California—raises questions about how a federal fire agency might be weaponized during crises. Calkin warns that "for such an organization to be successful, it has to be protected from the political whims."

The risk isn't just political interference during emergencies. Long-term fire risk reduction requires sustained investment in unglamorous work that doesn't generate headlines: clearing vegetation, updating building codes, and enforcing defensible space requirements around homes. These efforts often conflict with other land use priorities like recreation, wildlife protection, and resource extraction.

Beyond Federal Solutions

Perhaps the most sobering reality is that federal reorganization can't address the root causes driving wildfire risks. Private property owners must invest in fire-resistant building materials and maintain defensible perimeters around their homes. Local governments need to enforce updated building codes and zoning restrictions. State agencies must coordinate with federal efforts while managing their own resources.

Historical wildfire risk models "vastly underestimate the dangers" communities face today, according to experts. Climate change is shrinking the windows for safe controlled burns while expanding the conditions that fuel major blazes. Meanwhile, more people continue moving into fire-prone areas, creating what researchers call the "wildland-urban interface"—the most dangerous and expensive fires to fight.