Senators Warn Federal Firefighting Budget Nearly Exhausted With Fire Season Not Over
Five senators told Interior and USDA the $6 billion FY2026 fire suppression budget was nearly spent by Sept. 2, citing staffing gaps and firefighter deaths.
Five Democratic senators sent a letter on Sept. 11 to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warning that nearly all of the federal fire suppression budget for the fiscal year had been spent with the 2026 wildfire season not yet over, and that staffing shortages had left incident management teams relying on temporary supervisory structures.
What the senators said
The letter — signed by Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Ron Wyden of Oregon — noted that the two departments had “over $6 billion in fire suppression budget authority for Fiscal Year 2026. However, as of September 2, nearly the entire fire suppression budget has been spent.” In FY2025, the Forest Service and Interior spent a combined $5.9 billion on suppression, which the letter describes as a $1.5 billion increase over the previous most expensive year.
The senators asked the departments to answer questions in five areas:
- Firefighter fatalities and safety this season
- Staffing shortfalls, including how the number of contract federal wildland firefighter crews compares with previous years
- How efficiently suppression money is being spent
- “Fire borrowing,” the practice of pulling money from other programs to pay for firefighting
- Wildland firefighter compensation
The staffing concerns behind the letter
According to the letter, incident management teams “have worked more fires than is safe, using temporary supervisory structures because fully qualified personnel are not available.” Incident management teams are the crews of specialists who run large fires: operations, planning, logistics and safety.
The human cost
The letter references nine first responders killed during the 2026 season, a toll the senators tied directly to the strain on staffing and resources. It came after the national firefighting system spent from July 18 through Sept. 4 at Preparedness Level 5 — the highest level, meaning essentially all available federal fire resources nationwide were already committed to ongoing incidents.
The scale of the season driving the strain
The senators cited roughly 8.2 million acres burned nationally through the end of August, compared with about 4.1 million acres over the same period in 2025 — nearly double — and noted more than 310,000 acres had burned in California alone by that point. Those numbers track with the broader year-to-date figures NIFC has reported for the season; see FireVerge’s wildfires section for our coverage of the national fire statistics.
The broader backdrop: a new federal fire agency
The letter repeatedly addresses the U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS), the Interior Department’s consolidated wildland fire organization, which is being stood up in the middle of an above-average season and a suppression budget that is nearly spent.
Figures as of Sept. 11, 2026
Budget and acreage figures in this story reflect the senators’ letter dated Sept. 11, 2026, and NIFC’s contemporaneous reporting. Congress and the two departments had not issued a public response as of this writing.
Why this matters for residents
Federal fire suppression funding shortfalls can affect how quickly resources are mobilized to new fires, particularly when multiple large incidents compete for the same crews and aircraft. Residents in fire-prone areas can track current federal resource commitments through NIFC’s National Fire News, and FireVerge’s state pages and rankings section provide longer-term context on which states carry the highest wildfire exposure.