As millions of acres burn across the western United States, veteran wildland firefighters are raising alarms that aggressive suppression tactics ordered by the Trump administration — combined with extreme, fast-moving blazes — could endanger crews as conditions worsen this month. The 2026 season follows years of steadily intensifying wildfire activity across the West, a trend federal scientists have linked to prolonged drought, rising temperatures, and decades of fuel accumulation in overgrown forests.

Extreme weather drove disaster in Eastern Washington on Saturday, when a rapidly spreading wildfire leapt across the Spokane River and tore through Spokane neighborhoods, destroying more than 600 structures and prompting the evacuation of 60,000 residents. Incident Commander Tom Clemo described the blaze as "probably the largest, most destructive fire in Washington's history."

No fatalities have been confirmed in Spokane, though Mayor Lisa Brown told local journalists the city is "still assessing the potential for lives to be lost."

"There is not a fire department in the U.S. that can handle a wind-driven event this size," Spokane Assistant Fire Chief Lance Dahl told the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

Federal Directive for 'Full Suppression'

Ahead of this year's fire season, officials with the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department instructed wildfire crews to pursue a "full suppression" strategy and attack fires urgently. After a hot, dry winter left much of the West parched, federal land managers argued that containing fires quickly before they spread was essential.

In April, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum each sent directives to agency leaders ahead of the summer wildfire season. Both called for a "full suppression" approach.

"Accelerate initial attack and use a full suppression strategy, in coordination with our interagency partners, across all land jurisdictions to suppress fires early and limit growth," Rollins wrote.

Burgum called for "prompt, decisive" suppression of fires, adding that decisions should be "balanced with firefighter safety and a clear assessment of probability of success."

While both letters referenced safety, some wildland fire veterans say agency leaders have clearly prioritized aggressive fire attack. Some fear that crew leaders are being pressured to deploy close to the fire line instead of selecting the safest position from which to operate.

"I found it disturbing," said Riva Duncan, a former wildland fire chief with more than 30 years at the U.S. Forest Service. "You've got somebody in a suit in an office who's never fought fires saying you've got to go direct attack." Duncan serves as president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit advocating for wildfire professionals.

Beyond the agency directives, wildfire veterans also pointed to rhetoric from President Donald Trump, who has threatened to impose tariffs on Canada in retaliation for wildfire smoke drifting across the border.

"If managers and leaders are hearing from the politicos, 'put them all out, put them all out,' are we putting people in where we shouldn't be?" said Bobbie Scopa, whose 45-year firefighting career now leads her to serve as vice president with Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. "I'm hearing from some young firefighters who feel like they are getting pressure to take actions. It's stupid and you're scratching your head and people are getting hurt."

The Department of the Interior did not respond to a Stateline interview request. The Forest Service declined to comment, saying its resources are focused on fire response.

Echoes of the '10 a.m.' Policy

Following several dangerous incidents — including the deaths of four federal firefighters in Colorado in June — some longtime wildland fire leaders are questioning the strategy. Many view it as a return to the Forest Service's decades-old "10 a.m." policy, which aimed to suppress all reported fires by the morning after they were first detected. That policy was formally adopted in 1935, in the aftermath of the 1910 "Big Blowup" fires that killed 78 firefighters across the Northern Rockies and burned roughly three million acres in Idaho and Montana. It was officially replaced in 1978 with management frameworks allowing greater flexibility.

While many states also follow "full suppression" policies, federal officials have historically had greater discretion to allow fires to burn under supervision when they posed no threat to communities.

"No one in the agencies have said it, but it sure looks like (a return to the 10 a.m. policy) when you read the directions," said Jane Darnell, a wildfire veteran who served more than 30 years with the Forest Service before retiring in 2020. "We lived with the 10 a.m. policy for 100 years, and we got here. This full suppression promise to the public is a promise that can't be kept."

Federal policies that sought to extinguish all fires quickly over much of the past century are now understood by foresters to be a major contributor to today's wildfire crisis. In many areas, forests that historically experienced fire at regular intervals have grown denser than historical norms, with trees competing for scarce water and thick underbrush accumulating on the forest floor — conditions that provide abundant fuel and drive fast-moving, intense blazes.

Many wildfire leaders report extreme, unprecedented fire behavior this season, further compounding the risks of deploying crews aggressively.

Dangerous Incidents Mount

Fire crews across the country have already been involved in numerous dangerous incidents this year, including the Colorado tragedy in which four firefighters died after a fast-moving blaze overran their position.

"We've already had nine entrapments (firefighters having their position surrounded by fire) this year. That's crazy," Duncan said. "That suggests to me that fires are moving quickly and growing so fast."

Federal officials have said an investigation team is reviewing the Colorado incident.

"I do trace the tragedy in Colorado to that policy that compelled them to go out and aggressively attack the fires even when conditions did not favor safety or success," said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter who now serves as executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology, a group advocating for ecological fire management.

"This policy that compels crews to blindly rush out and attack all fires is just not smart and it's very unsafe," Ingalsbee said. "They're throwing back to the policy of the 1930s, ignoring everything we've learned about fire ecology and fire behavior."

Other veterans caution that more details are needed before attributing the Colorado deaths to federal strategy.

"It's just really hard to connect that at this time," Duncan said. "I have faith that the investigation team is looking at that."

The Loss of 'Managed Fire'

Many former firefighters have decried the federal government's abandonment of "managed fire" as a strategic tool. Under that approach, federal land managers in previous years were given discretion to let some fires burn under supervision, provided they did not threaten homes or infrastructure. In those cases, agency leaders recognized fire's ecological benefits and its potential to reduce the risk of future catastrophic blazes. The practice was formally incorporated into federal wildland fire policy through a series of updates beginning in the late 1970s and reinforced in the 1995 and 2001 federal fire policy reviews, which concluded that attempting to exclude fire entirely from fire-adapted landscapes was neither ecologically sound nor operationally feasible.

"The problem is not fire itself, it's our relationship with it," Darnell said. "We can work with these fires that are highly unlikely to have catastrophic effects on infrastructure, keep them on there until the weather puts them out."

Ingalsbee echoed that view: "Excluding fire from the landscape and attacking all fires, that policy ended in the '70s because it was failing. It's performative firefighting, it's failing to accomplish tangible goals and it's putting lives in danger. Fire is nature's recycling."

State Leaders Respond

At the state level, foresters in the Pacific Northwest — the region hardest hit by fires this year — say they have not yet seen evidence that federal directives are causing firefighters to take greater risks. Most state agencies are required by law to suppress rather than manage fires.

Oregon State Forester Kacey KC said the state's landscape is too parched this year to safely manage fires for ecological benefit.

"Every fire we can keep small is good," she said. "Especially in conditions like this, there is not good fire right now on this landscape."

In Washington, State Forester George Geissler said he had not heard of federal crews taking extra risks, but cautioned that federal leaders should be mindful of their messaging.

"If you set goals, but you don't set a good leadership tone related to safety, you can have those type of decisions being made," he said.

Geissler identified the bigger concern this year as upheaval within federal agency leadership. Under Trump, the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior have been hit with severe staff reductions. The Forest Service is undergoing a major reorganization, and firefighting operations from multiple Interior Department agencies have been consolidated into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service, which Trump established this year without congressional approval.

"In the past, you knew who to go to, you knew which position had what," Geissler said. "Now with the rapid changes, the loss of personnel, it's a little bit scattered."

Federal crews are not the only ones facing dangerous wildfire situations this year. Two separate incidents in Washington state left firefighters injured when fires overran their positions. One of those — the Lyons Ferry Fire — involved a Washington Department of Natural Resources helicopter crew. Geissler described it as a wakeup call for the agency.

"When the weather is this bad, all of those (safety protocols) become more and more critical," he said. "We did a full safety standdown over it, because that was an extremely close call for those firefighters."

Darnell said she would not be surprised to learn of additional incidents in which firefighters are forced to deploy their individual emergency shelters — last-resort devices that can save lives but do not offer full protection in extreme conditions.

"We've got conditions on the ground that are so explosive, it really begs us to be really careful about where we put people," Darnell said. "I hope we don't see any significant loss of life for firefighters."

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.