Once upon a time, most guys actually out cutting line were a combination of Forest Service and other fed employees, college kids and other people looking for summer jobs, supplemented by casual labor. Nowadays, it's still moderately casual, but by having the state supply the work crews, one is subjected to the Oregonian concept of how to do things. There are not many Forest service employees left at that level (in part because there aren't nearly that many FS employees any more), and they mostly do management jobs.
Some work crews in the west are mostly staffed by Native Americans, which seems to have become a warrior culture activity (and pity the person who tries to put members of the wrong tribes together on the same crew bus).
But in Oregon in particular, and in other places as well, there aren't as many college students doing this work, and a lot of them are now hispanic.
Doing what they are doing is hard work. Fighting wildfire on the line is a lot like ditch digging. You hack and cut and clear the ground down to the mineral earth. The tools are a combination of things like axes, and mattocks and shovels and polaskis, a sort of axe/hoe combination.
A lot of young people don't even want to think about it. It's hot, there's a lot of smoke, the hourly wage is kind of low (although you make a killing in OT - 12 hour shifts for 2 weeks at a time on a big fire).
And so this is a result.
There are some safety factors involved. If most of your guys don't speak English, and you get in a crisis situation, and have to deploy fire shelters, they better be able to understand.
But just another example of the direction things are going.
Je parle Francais un peut. Je suis "bilingual", oui?
That won't stop the anti-hispanic kneejerkers on FR who will b!tch to the moon, but ask them to become a firefighter and you will hear crickets.
Also, However, Manuel did say he felt the situation would improve if everyone spoke English. "We're living here. We should speak the language.", which I agree with.
This is pure crap.
The direction of things is just getting worse and worse and trade and trade, illegals take over.
What about the safety aspect of having to give safety directions in two languages? Doesn't that slow the response time and endanger whosever language is spoken second? Who gets first warning to break out the fire tents?
Sorry but I believe they ought to require fireworkers to speak English. Do they allow non-English speaking firemen in communities? This is stupid. The best and brightest fire management will be lost to the crews while less-experienced but bilingual bosses endanger everyone.
RE: #2 Trying to make a couple of points here. Somehow, "bilingual" only means Spanish. It should not.
If you are going to work in this country in a critical job such as firefighting, you need to speak English well. It is not the job of government to require a crew chief to speak other languages (a plus in the salary department, sure). I live near a large Vietnamese community, so by the standards of the article, firefighting crew chiefs should be required to speak Vietnamese in that area.
Interesting article ping
How about firing the firefighters that don't speak English?
Oregon FReepers aside, I hope Oregon burns to the ground this summer.
I wonder if there is still use of minimum and medium security inmates as firefighters? I ask this because I know in AZ in the late 1970s there were prison fire crews and as I understood it they had to volunteer, but would get paid regular wages instead of the 50 cents an hour they were paid for work in the prison. I know at that time they were good crews, and I never heard of a problem using them. They worked with trained crews doing the shovel work mostly. At that time the crews were mostly college students and prisoners. The bosses were all trained professionals but not the general crew.
If the reason they are hiring illegals is because of a shortage of firefighters then they should consider using prisoners if they don't still use them.
I do think everyone should be required to speak English. This is a really bad idea to get rid of the bosses because they don't speak Spanish. What if people who spoke other languages apply- will they fire the bosses if they don't speak Russian or German?
http://easylink.playstream.com/katu/060623firefighters_folo_5pm.wvx