Radios crackle with chatter from a wildfire incident command post. Up the fireline, firefighters in yellow jerseys are swinging Pulaskis, axlike hand tools, to carve a fuel break into the land.

By 10 a.m., these firefighters have already hiked 3 miles up steep, uneven terrain and built nearly 1,200 feet of fireline.

It’s physically exhausting work and essential for protecting communities as wildfire risks rise in a warming world. Hotshot crews like this one, the U.S. Forest Service’s Lolo Hotshots, are the elite workforce of the forests. When they’re on the fireline, their bodies’ total daily energy demands can rival that of the cyclists in the Tour de France, as my team’s research with wildland fire crews shows.

These firefighters are also caught in Congress’ latest budget battle, where demands by far-right House members to slash federal spending could lead to a governmentwide shutdown after the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, 2023.

After extreme fire seasons in 2020 and 2021, Congress funded a temporary bonus that boosted average U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighter pay by either 50% or US$20,000, whichever was lower. But that increase expires after Sept. 30, knocking many federal firefighters back to earning the minimum $15 per hour.

Legislation to make the raise permanent is pending before Congress, which is now preoccupied. A short-term pay boost may be possible, but that doesn’t solve the long-term pay problem. And if the government shuts down, federal firefighters will likely be working without immediate pay. The National Federation of Federal Employees warns that a large number of firefighters could quit if their pay also drops.

Firefighters push their bodies to extremes

Life on the fireline is demanding. Pack straps dig into the neck and shoulders with each swing of the Pulaski. It’s a constant reminder that everything wildland firefighters need, they carry – all day.

The critical water and food items, supplies, extra gear and fireline tools – Pulaskis, chain saws and fuel – add up to an average gear weight often exceeding 50 pounds.

Hiking with a load and digging firelines with hand tools burns about 6 to 14 calories per minute. Heart rates rise in response to an increased pace of digging.

Measured with the same techniques used to quantify the energy demands of Tour de France riders, wildland firefighters demonstrate an average total energy expenditure approaching 4,000 to 5,000 calories per day. Some days can exceed the Tour’s average of about 6,000 calories, equivalent to around 12 McDonald’s Happy Meals. Add to that a daily water need of 1.5 to over 2 gallons.

This isn’t just for a few days. Fire season in the western United States can last five months or more, with most Hotshot crews accumulating four to five times the number of operational days of the 22-day Tour de France and over 1,000 hours of overtime.

The physical demand of a day on the fireline

My team has been measuring the physical strain and total energy demands of work on an active wildfire, with the goal of finding ways to improve firefighter fueling strategies and health and safety on the line.

The crew members we work with are outfitted with a series of lightweight monitors that measure heart rate, as well as movement patterns and speed, using GPS. Each participant swallows a temperature-tracking sensor before breakfast that will record core body temperature each minute throughout the work shift.

As the work shift progresses, the Hotshots constantly monitor their surroundings and self-regulate their nutrient and fluid intake, knowing their shift could last 12 to 16 hours.

During intense activity in high heat, their fluid intake can increase to 32 ounces per hour or more.

The highest-intensity activity is generally during the early morning hike to the fireline. However, the metabolic demands can sharply increase if crews are forced into a rapid emergency evacuation from the fire.

My team’s research has found that the most effective way for wildland firefighters to stay fueled is to eat small meals frequently throughout the work shift, similar to the patterns perfected by riders in the Tour. This preserves cognitive health, helping firefighters stay focused and sharp for making potentially lifesaving decisions and keenly aware of their ever-dynamic surroundings, and boosts their work performance. It also helps slow the depletion of important muscle fuel.

Although crews gradually acclimatize to the heat over the season, the risk for heat exhaustion is ever present if the work rate is not kept in check. This cannot be prevented by simply drinking more water during long work shifts. However, regular breaks and having a strong aerobic capacity provides some protection by reducing heat stress and overall risk.

The season takes a toll

Hotshots are physically fit, and they train for the fire season just as many athletes train for their competition season. Most crew members are hired temporarily during the fire season – typically from May to October, but that’s expanding as the planet warms. And there are distinct fitness requirements for the job. The physical preparations are demanding, take months and are expected, even when temporary crew members are not officially employed by the agencies.

Still, with the immense physical demands of the job, crew members often experience a decay in metabolic and cardiovascular health and an increase in cholesterol, blood lipids and body fat. It is unclear why such a hardworking job often makes firefighters less healthy, requiring an off-season reset to recover, retrain and rebuild.

The season causes damage. This unfolds counter to the commonly accepted benefits of regular exercise. Pollutant and smoke exposure, lapses in nutrition, sleep disorders and chronic stress during the season seem to gradually poke holes in the Hotshot armor.

Progressive intervention strategies can help, such as educational programs on specific physical training and nutritional needs, mindfulness training to reduce the risk of job-oriented anxiety and depression, and emotional support for crew members and families. However, these require agency and congressional investment, a commitment beyond ensuring pay raises remain intact. Removing either is synonymous with taking away critical tools for the job on the firelines.

Developing offseason practices that pay close attention to both physical and mental health recovery can help limit harm to firefighters’ health. Many Hotshots have bounced back and returned season after season. However, a government shutdown and failure to act on pay with no thought to the health and safety of front-line fire crews could worsen crew retention in an already dwindling workforce.

This is an update to an article originally published Aug. 8, 2023.

Brent C. Ruby, Professor of exercise and work physiology, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The U.S. is moving toward a government shutdown. House and Senate appropriators are divided on spending levels, policy riders and additional items, such as support for Ukraine.

As a political scientist who studies the evolving budget process, as well as brinksmanship in Congress, it is clear to me that this episode prompts many important questions for how the U.S. is governed.

There’s the larger, long-term question: What are the costs of congressional dysfunction?

But the more immediate concern for people of the country is how a shutdown will affect them. Whether delayed business loans, slower mortgage applications, curtailed food assistance or postponed food inspections, the effects could be substantial.

Affected: Farm loans to Head Start grants

The total federal budget is almost US$6 trillion. A little over one-fourth is discretionary spending that is funded by the annual appropriations process and thus debated in Congress. This portion of spending provides money for virtually every federal agency, roughly half of which goes to defense. The rest of yearly federal spending is on mandatory entitlement programs, mainly Social Security and Medicare, as well as interest on the national debt.

The Office of Management and Budget, which oversees both development of federal budget plans by federal agencies and their performance, regularly requires agencies to develop shutdown plans. Because agencies continually update these plans, no two shutdowns are exactly alike. Details depend on the agency, program and duration of the shutdown, as well as laws passed with funding since the previous shutdown, and the administration’s priorities. These plans identify a variety of ways the shutdown will affect Americans.

If a shutdown happens this year, new loan approvals from the Small Business Administration will stop. The Federal Housing Administration will experience delays in processing home mortgage loans and approvals. The Department of Agriculture will not offer new farm loans. Head Start grants will not be awarded, initially affecting 10,000 young children from low-income families who are in the program.

Some food inspections by the Food and Drug Administration, workplace safety inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and environmental safety inspections by the Environmental Protection Agency could be delayed, as they have been when the government stopped functioning in the past.

During the last shutdown, about 60,000 immigration hearings, organized by the Department of Justice and not the courts, were canceled and had to be rescheduled. This year would also see cases involving noncitizens who are not being held by the government reset for a later date, even as other immigration services proceed.

Infrastructure projects awaiting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency could be stalled. The National Institute of Health’s clinical trials for diseases could also be slowed.

This is not a comprehensive list. Agency plans show what happens when federal workers are furloughed – that is, those who cannot report to work in a shutdown. Furloughs will apply to over 700,000 out of roughly 3.5 million federal employees, but even more workers will be “excepted” and required to work without pay until the shutdown ends.

That of course means employee hardship. But like past shutdowns, unpaid workers can fail to report to work in larger numbers. Americans relying on those services will face delays. There may be air travel delays as well, as air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents go without pay.

Not affected: The IRS, postal service and entitlement programs

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits are entitlement programs that are not included in the annual appropriations process. Americans relying on these programs will not see those benefits affected. But these programs require administration. Federal employees would not be available to verify benefits or send out new cards.

There are additional funding sources for government activities, beyond entitlement programs, that aren’t included in the annual appropriations bills and thus are unlikely to be affected by a shutdown.

The U.S. Postal Service, independently funded through its own services, will be unaffected by a shutdown. The federal judiciary could operate for a limited time, funded by court filings, fees and appropriations allocated off the yearly cycle. But this funding won’t last long – 10 days was an estimate for the 2013 shutdown. The Supreme Court, which has functioned in previous shutdowns, is expected to continue its typical schedule.

Sometimes, agencies have funding that exceeds the typical annual appropriations cycle. Or, earlier laws may have been passed that fund activities of an agency in whole or in part. The Inflation Reduction Act provided funds to run the IRS through 2031. Previous shutdowns saw significant IRS furloughs and employees walking off the job. This year, the IRS promises to be fully operational despite a shutdown.

A variety of advance appropriations also exist that provide funding for various programs one year or more beyond the year the appropriations bill was passed, including Veterans Affairs medical care; most VA benefits are unaffected.

The primary law governing funding gaps also makes exceptions for “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property,” which includes a variety of military activities.

The big question mark

The major unknown is, of course, how long a shutdown might last. Food assistance programs – including the federal food program for poorer women, infants and children, called WIC, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP – which have some contingency funds that carry over into the next fiscal year but are running low, run the risk of those accounts running out.

The federal judiciary has limited funds. There are also a variety of federal grants to states and localities that could be short on funds, such as disaster relief and economic development programs, in addition to nutrition assistance. Government officials at the federal, state and local levels will have to make choices about whether a federal shortfall should be covered by state funds, or if workers should be furloughed. Some of these funds have been protected by increased funding in recent laws: The Highway Trust Fund is solvent through 2027, due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021.

The economy as a whole will suffer more the longer a shutdown continues. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the last shutdown, in 2018-2019, reduced gross domestic product growth by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2019. While that 35-day partial shutdown was the longest in U.S. history, it did not affect all agencies.

Federal employees and contractors are disproportionately hurt. Federal employees who are furloughed or excepted and do not receive pay during the shutdown will receive it retroactively, according to a 2019 law passed as a response to the last shutdown.

No such policy exists for contractors working for the federal government, including services ranging from janitorial to manufacturing. Beyond affecting individual workers, the private sector loses business and adjusts its hiring decisions and other practices.

Laura Blessing, Senior Fellow, Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, Georgetown University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.