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President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he is raising federal firefighters’ wages to no less than $15 an hour, as he met with a group of governors to discuss drought, heat and wildfires in the western part of the U.S.
Western states have been hit by severe drought and record heat that has burned more than 2,000 square miles this year. As the Associated Press reports, that is ahead of the pace in 2020, which saw a near-record 15,000 square miles burned and more than 17,000 homes and other structures destroyed.
Biden called the wage currently made by federal firefighters “unacceptable to me” and told governors he would raise it to at least $15 an hour, with bonuses for those working on the front lines.
The Interior Department says pay for new federal firefighters is $11 an hour to $14 an hour. The president said “that’s going to end in my administration,” as he visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency last week.
Biden was joined virtually by Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a Republican, and six other governors.
The president said climate change was intensifying wildfire season and said the U.S. is currently “playing catch up” on combating fires. “This is an area that has been under-resourced. But that’s going to change,” he said.
Biden during the virtual meeting also pitched the bipartisan infrastructure agreement he recently struck, noting it provides nearly $50 billion to build resilience to wildfires by investing in forest management, among other things. Congress may act on that plan in the fall, MarketWatch has reported.
See: Biden pushes for infrastructure spending, as Congress seen acting in fall
Also read: Climate change’s impact on jobs and inflation is already a factor in Fed policy, says Daly
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
