Peak wildfire season in the Western U.S. isn't over yet, and California senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff say they’re concerned that federal agencies won’t have enough money for the rest of the 2026 season.
Padilla and Schiff, along with Democratic senators from Oregon and Colorado, sent a letter to the Department of Interior and Agriculture that said some agencies have already spent more than 70% of their roughly $6 billion fire suppression budget.
The letter also warns that the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Wildland Fire Service don’t have enough staff to sustain operations.
Jesse Torres, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, says the state agency hasn’t noticed any delays in receiving federal support.
“We have a great mutual aid system throughout the state of California, so we have other sources that we use,” he said. “We don't rely solely on federal resources throughout California.”
However, Torres did say that there has been “some lag” from federal incident management teams.
The senators are asking the federal government how it plans to address staffing shortages, and avoid running out of money.
In 2025 the Trump administration let go of more than three thousand Forest Service employees, and the agency launched a reorganization earlier this year.
