Persistent staffing shortages at the N.C. Forest Service and broken equipment are putting western North Carolina at heightened wildfire risk, particularly because of the wide swaths of downed and now-drying trees from Helene, state fire officials told lawmakers Thursday.
"The fires service manages in chaos and we will not fail, that's just our mentality. But I don't feel that we are currently ready for the fire risk, fire danger that we have in the next 15 years," Brian Taylor, North Carolina's state fire marshal, told the N.C. Newsroom in an interview.
Taylor was speaking Thursday following a hearing of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Emergency Management, which also heard from the N.C. Forest Service, the agency tasked with fighting wildfires. Officials from both agencies pointed to damage to trees from Helene as a key factor in the heightened risk.
Helene's winds and floods damaged more than 822,000 acres of forests, the N.C. Forest Service estimated after the storm, a number it has since determined is likely low using satellite imagery showing changes in forests.
Downed trees fell across old lumber roads and fire breaks that firefighters have historically used to respond to wildfires, changing how the agency will fight western North Carolina blazes for years to come.
But that's not the only challenge the Forest Service is facing. The agency typically has a vacancy rate between 15 and 20%, with entry level positions most persistently open. Those jobs are county level foresters and forest fire equipment operators that are the first to respond when a wildfire is reported, often working closely with local fire departments.
A key problem the agency faces with retention is that county-level rangers and firefighting staff do not see their salaries rise with experience, Greg Hicks, the N.C. Forest Service's state forester told the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Emergency Management during Thursday's hearing. A forester with 11 years of experience makes the same $46,597 annual salary as someone on their first day.
Hicks told legislators that the Forest Service has about $47 million to spend on salaries, a number that has stayed consistent for a number of years. Without cutting staff, he said, there is not room in that budget for raises.
"We really don't have a mechanism to move these personnel through the pay grades. So basically once we get the personnel in there, there are no steps until there (are) really increases from the legislature," Hicks said.
It typically costs between $27,000 and $30,000 to train a new hire in wildland firefighting, agency officials wrote on a slide shown to lawmakers. And about a third of new hires leave before they can complete the Forest Service's two-year ranger training program.
"Wildland fire is something that you don't just pull somebody off the street and teach them," Hicks said.
Right now, the agency has 77 vacancies.
The Forest Service is also down a helicopter, leaving it with access to five that can drop water on fires. The broken helicopter is a 2001 Airbus Eurocopter Astar based out of Kinston.
"It is unfortunately broken beyond repair. It doesn't make financial sense to repair," Hicks said.
Helicopters take on increased importance in the post-Helene landscape because they offer firefighters the chance to dump water on blazes they can't reach over land.
The Forest Service plans to ask the General Assembly for money to replace that helicopter in the upcoming short session, but is also keeping an eye on military surplus to see if it can obtain one that way instead.
Increased fire risk
Adding to the challenge is the increasing number of fires North Carolina has faced in recent years.
The Forest Service responded to 5,579 wildfires last year, the second-most since 2016. The average over that period is 4,598 fires annually that burn 29,499 acres.
On Wednesday alone, Hicks said, there were 94 fires that burned 494 acres. This month, there have been 518 fires that burned 2,759 acres.
These fires happen across the state, but fire officials are particularly worried about western North Carolina. That's in part because of the downed trees from Helene that make it impossible or dangerous for Forest Service firefighting crews to respond to some parts of forests where blazes take hold.
"We're going to have to go around these highly damaged areas. That means larger fires, that means more smoke, that means safety, that means concerns for the general public with that smoke. That's just going to be the reality of how we're going to have to fight fires in the post-Helene landscape," Kevin Harvell, the Forest Service's deputy state forester, told legislators.
Harvell pointed to last year's Black River Cove Fire in Polk and Henderson counties. The blaze sprung up in the spring, which is typically not fire season, burning more intensely than crews typically expect. It was feeding, Harvell said, off of trees that were downed during Helene, jumping control lines that firefighters had established and ultimately taking weeks to extinguish.
The fire was reported on March 19, 2025, with Forest Service officials posting their final update on April 3. Ultimately, three blazes in the Black Cove complex burned nearly 7,700 acres.
"That will become the norm for the next 10 to 15 years when we get fires established in these Helene-damaged stands," Harvell said.
The Office of the State Fire Marshal is primarily concerned with working with local firefighting agencies to protect structures from fires, where the Forest Service is tasked with responding to wildfires.
Taylor, the state's fire marshal, warned lawmakers that staffing shortfalls at the Forest Service could mean that more North Carolina buildings will be threatened by wildfires.
In the coming years, Taylor told the committee, the state should be prepared to turn more toward contract firefighters to respond to wildfires. That could mean budgeting money to the Forest Service and Office of the State Fire Marshal before disasters that can be tapped to respond once a disaster is declared, allowing money to flow more quickly than waiting for the General Assembly to convene and pass a disaster relief bill.
"It's very important for us to look at having resources for disaster dollars up front and not waiting until we come before you all for a disaster budget," Taylor said.
Agricultural Commissioner Steve Troxler has been making a similar case for months. Last year, the General Assembly passed a Helene relief bill allocating $15 million to the Forest Service for wildfire preparedness and to help pay contract firefighters if necessary.
The Office of the State Fire Marshal needs its own pot of disaster response money, Taylor said, to help pay for aircraft if necessary to move people and equipment across the state.
Taylor also told lawmakers that due to the Forest Service's staffing shortages, the Office of the State Fire Marshal is encouraging more firefighters who are typically trained to respond to structure fires to receive cross-training in basic wildfire response. Forest Service staff provide that training.
"They have a recruitment issue and a retention issue across the state, and I feel like we have to supplement that to be prepared in the coming years," Taylor said.
