Wildfires bring jobs, money to reservations

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 wildland fire engines – four-wheel-drive pickup trucks Cahoon 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 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.”

From northern Montana to southern Arizona, half a decade of drought and wildfire has offered Native Americans 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 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.”

When the fire season returns to normal – which would largely eliminate state demand for high-priced Indian fire engines – Harwood said he expects a number of people will go broke. But that seems unlikely this summer.