U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, with Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein of California, fired off a letter to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho on Tuesday.
They want the interagency to resume publishing firefighter training materials in Spanish, and walk back a 2016 decision to discontinue translations long-used to train entry-level firefighters.
鈥淕iven that a significant number of these brave wildland fire crew speak Spanish as their native language, it would be wiser and safer to provide bilingual training materials,鈥� the senators鈥� letter states.
The training materials help new firefighters with public agencies and those working through private contracts get the same information. , about a decade after they were introduced. Federal fire managers said there wasn鈥檛 enough demand to update the texts.
鈥� weren鈥檛 getting the number of requests in Spanish as in English. And it wasn鈥檛 economically feasible to do both,鈥� said Jessica Gardetto, deputy chief of external affairs for the National Interagency Fire Center.
She said it鈥檚 up to private contractors if they want to train and hire firefighters who communicate in Spanish. Those crews must have bilingual bosses, while all official communication on the fireline is in English.
鈥淎nd contractors have the ability to pay for these to be updated if they want, but they would rather have the federal agencies pay for it,鈥� Gardetto said.
That鈥檚 exactly what a trade association representing 20 wildland fire contractors is planning to do, said Dillon Sanders, president of the Oregon Firefighting Contractors Association.
鈥淏ut, we hope the government will do the right thing, so we don鈥檛 have to,鈥� Sanders said.
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