While federal funding is being cut to train firefighters to fight wildfires, Mid-Missourians are continuing to pitch in to relief efforts for victims of fires in Kansas and other border states.
The juxtaposition is obvious: Funding is being cut for a problem that has grown since the mid-1980s.
At the annual University of Missouri Summer Fire School, held last week in Jefferson City, attendance dropped from around 600 to 400. That's because the Midwest Wildfire Training Academy didn't take place for the first time since 2002, due to a lack of funding.
The Big Rivers Forest Fire Management Compact, including Missouri, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois, is supported by the U.S. Forest Service Northeast Region, which had joined MU to establish the wildfire academy offering nationally certified wildfire management courses.
MU spokesman Tracy Gray said that, while the Wildfire Training Academy was cut, a limited amount of wildfire training still was being given through the main fire school.
As we reported last week, Missouri averages more than 3,700 wildfires each year, scorching 55,000 acres of forest and grassland, Gray said, so continuing some form of wildfire training is important.
Meanwhile, Mid-Missourians generously have donated their time and talents to relief efforts. Some have donated supplies to numerous convoys heading to the plains.
We commend area residents for helping our neighbors to the west. That includes people like part-time farmers Lance and Chance Sommerer, who have helped in their own way: They have art created with the skeletal remains of burned-out cattle fences to raise money for relief efforts.
"I just put myself in their shoes. If I had lost that much," it would be nice to know there are people out there who cared enough to help, Chance said.
Most wildfires occur in the western states, where heat, drought, and thunderstorms (lightening) create perfect wildfire conditions.
With wildfires posing such huge problems, and with 24,000 firefighters in Missouri who should receive the latest training, it only makes sense to offer a Wildfire Training Academy component within the fire school.
Federal funding is tight, but we hope the school can find a way to reinstate the Wildfire Training Academy in the future.