WESTERN U.S. Wildfires stoke economy on Indian lands

Equipment leases and firefighting infuse money into the impoverished areas.
WASHINGTON POST
RONAN, Mont. -- Francis Cahoon, born and raised here on the Flathead Indian Reservation, knows it sounds coldhearted, but he is hoping for another summer of ferocious wildfires across the Rocky Mountain West.
Last year, when fires burned a quarter-million acres in Montana, Cahoon said he and his three sons grossed $250,000 fighting them. Most of that came from leasing three wild-land fire engines -- four-wheel-drive pickup trucks that Cahoon had rigged with water tanks -- to the state at $1,300 per engine per day. This year, he has added a bulldozer ($1,685 a day) to his fire-suppression armada.
If all goes well -- if the federal government's forecast for another "above-normal" fire season proves correct and parched western forests explode into flames as they have for the past five summers -- Cahoon and his sons will have steady work for months, making as much as $5,675 a day.
"That's pretty good wages for little Indian boys on the reservation," said Cahoon, who celebrated the end of last year's lucrative fire season by trading in his Corvette for a new $43,000 Ford Expedition SUV. "I'm not the typical smart white businessman who wears a suit, but I still make as much as doctors or lawyers around here."
Economic boost
From northern Montana to southern Arizona, half a decade of drought and wildfire has offered American Indians something they have rarely, if ever, experienced -- a sustained economic boom. "Fire has become steady work," Cahoon said.
Not everyone, of course, is making serious money the way Cahoon and his sons are. But federal fire managers and tribal officials agree that an abnormally long run of "good fire years" has visibly improved lives and lifted spirits on Indian reservations.
These are among the poorest places in the United States, with four in 10 residents living below the poverty line and unemployment rarely falling below 40 percent.
"Fire money is paying bills, buying vehicles, and we see a lot of college students depending on firefighting to stay in school," said Leon Ben Jr., assistant fire manager in Phoenix for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. "These fires have benefited all 46 of the reservations that I have in my southwest region."
The federal government and western states have, in turn, become extraordinarily dependent on Indians as shock troops to contain forest fires. Although Indians make up only about 1 percent of the country's population, they account for about half the firefighters on the front lines of wildfires in the United States, said Dale Glenmore, assistant fire manager in Billings, Mont., for the Rocky Mountain region of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
"It is the high unemployment," Glenmore said. "This is a population you can tap into fairly easily."
Record wages
The Montana Indian Firefighters program, which Glenmore runs, paid a record $12 million in wages last year to about 2,500 firefighters, Glenmore said. That's more than $4,500 each.
"Most of that went to young people who otherwise might not be working," Glenmore said, adding that on several reservations in Montana, firefighter wages exceeded the combined income of all other tribal members.
Ten years ago, there were three privately owned wildfire engines in the Flathead Valley. Now, there are 30, said Tony Harwood, fire management officer for the tribe's Fire Control Center.
Across the reservation, more pumper trucks are being welded together every month. Harwood calls it one of the biggest small-business booms in the reservation's history.
When the fire season returns to normal -- which would largely eliminate state demand for high-priced Indian fire engines -- Harwood said he expects that a number of people will go broke. That, though, seems unlikely this summer.
After the West is finished burning this fall, Cahoon said, he plans to buy himself a new Corvette.