As Gov. Josh Stein put ink to paper to accept lawmakers’ reduced budget for Hurricane Helene disaster recovery, a new crisis was beginning to unfold in Western North Carolina.
Wildfires sweeping through parts of the mountains – ultimately burning about 18,000 acres – were being made worse, fire officials said, by the countless trees downed by Hurricane Helene.
The Forest Service – one of the agencies in charge of controlling the burns – was understaffed, lacked experience and faced high employee turnover.
Before the fires, Stein – worried about the threat – requested $19 million to help the North Carolina Forest Service with debris removal and other essential work.
The Republican-led legislature approved $524 million, just over half of Stein’s initial $1 billion request. They funded a wide range of programs and agencies including grants for fire departments. But the measure did not fund any of the Forest Service’s request.
NC Rep. Mark Pless, who serves as vice chair for the House Committee for Helene Recovery, said that the initial Helene Relief bill was aimed at helping people, not agencies.
“ What we were trying to do with the Helene bill was get money out that could be used by these communities to start recovering,” he said. “That's really all we were focusing on. We weren't focusing on anything else.
More money for the Forest Service should be included in the state’s budget, not a relief bill, Pless, who represents parts of Haywood and Madison counties which have both seen wildfires after Helene, said.
“ A lot of people wants us to fund things through here that belong in the budget.”
Speaking in Polk County where the largest wildfire in the region burned, Stein pointed the finger at state lawmakers.
“ I had money …that I submitted to the General Assembly for funding to help us get ahead of these forest fires…They didn't fully fund everything I've asked.”
Helene’s effects will last years
During a typical year, fire crews from the North Carolina Forest Service work to control about 4,500 wildfires throughout the state, but the next decade will be anything but normal, according to Michael Cheek, the Mountain Division Director for the NC Forest Service.
Fire activity this year is already well above average, Cheek said. Wildfires are expected to grow larger and more difficult to control after Hurricane Helene damaged an estimated 822,000 acres of forest land in Western North Carolina. Downed trees are expected to dry out, serving as fuel for fires over the next decade.
In addition, damage to roads makes it harder for fire crews to access wildfires.
“Our average one-acre fire might turn into 10 acres,” Cheek told BPR. “We had a 10-acre fire several weeks ago in Mitchell County that turned into 165 acres because it's in these blow-down areas and we can't get around them.”
The worsening fires will require more manpower and resources to battle the blazes.
Even Stein’s $19 million proposed in the Helene recovery measure fell short of the $28 million the Forest Service said it needed for overtime pay, salary increases and the creation of a 22-person wildfire and fuel management crew “to protect critical infrastructure, homes and the public” in Helene-impacted areas.
Other items included replacing equipment and creating more full-time positions in seven western counties that are only staffed with one forest ranger.
“Most employees that leave cite low pay and poor work life ratio, due to emergency response requirements, as factors when choosing to leave,” the funding request to lawmakers said.
Pless said funding personnel is one of his top priorities in the upcoming budget.
“Those guys have worked their tails off,” he said. “My push behind the scenes is to get them more money to help compensate them for the efforts that they're putting in there. We can clean trees anytime over the next five years, but they really need help right now financially. “
The Forest Service listed an average of nearly 100 vacancies over the last five years, including several in Western North Carolina.
The agency’s budget request did not include a pay raise line item, but the Forest Service asked for $1.5 million to pay for overtime and on-call pay for staff.
The Forest Service said crews racked up more than 90,000 hours of compensatory time – paid time off for working overtime, in lieu of cash – related to fighting wildfires between 2022 and 2023. That would translate to more than $2 million in overtime pay, according to the document.
Some of the overtime pay is funded by cost savings from roles that are sitting vacant. .
The cost for the fuel management crew – who would lead efforts to clear forests of downed trees – would be just over $2 million.
“More now than ever, building quality staff, keeping quality staff – to keep [them] you have to pay for them – is so important just to be able to keep the public safe,” Cheek said.
The shortage could have ramifications for people in wildfire-prone areas.
“When it gets down to brass tacks…we put out wildfires to protect the public and to protect structures, so if we don't have highly qualified, highly trained people to put the wildfires out it makes it difficult.”
Future funding
After meeting with officials from the Forest Service and several counties affected by the fires, Stein said he intends to go back to legislators with another request.
“We need many more forest service employees,” Stein said during an interview with BPR. “I've called for – in my budget to the General Assembly – them to be able to hire dozens and dozens more firefighters. We have to raise the pay because there are too many vacancies.”
Stein said he will also continue to push Congress for “meaningful help” to help recover from Helene, the state’s worst natural disaster ever. State officials have estimated the storm caused a record $59.6 billion in damages and recovery needs.
Some of the funding burden for the clean up should be borne by the federal government, who own much of the forest land in the state. Pless said.
“ North Carolina only has a very minuscule part of this state. The federal government has a lot, but should we clean up the federal government's land as well as ours?”
Stein’s state budget, a separate proposal from the $1 billion post-Helene funding request, was unveiled last month.
It included $1 million for replacing Forest Service fire fighting equipment; $500,000 for overtime and on-call pay; and $450,000 for aviation operating costs like fuel and maintenance for the Forest Service fleet. It also included a $1,000 raise for most state employees and a 2% raise.
The Senate is expected to release their initial budget proposal next week.
Buncombe County’s House delegation – made up of Democratic Representatives Eric Ager, Brian Turner, and Lindsey Prather – filed a bill on Tuesday requesting an additional $582 million from the state for recovery from Hurricane Helene.
Among other requests, the measure would give $19 million to the Forest Service.
“We are in the midst of one of the worst wildfire seasons on record and hurricane season is around the corner. Climate disasters keep their own calendar so the state needs to move faster” Rep. Turner said.
WUNC’s Adam Wagner contributed reporting to this story.
