FEMA Cancels Wildfires Training Due To Funding Cuts

The Associated Press reports:

FEMA announced Saturday that National Fire Academy courses were canceled amid a “process of evaluating agency programs and spending to ensure alignment with Administration priorities,” according to a notice sent to instructors, students and fire departments. Instructors were told to cancel all future travel until further notice.

“The NFA is a powerhouse for the fire service,” said Marc Bashoor, a former Maryland fire chief and West Virginia emergency services director with 44 years of fire safety experience. “It’s not a ‘nice to have.’ It is the one avenue we have to bring people from all over the country to learn from and with each other. If we want to continue to have one of the premier fire services in the world, we need to have the National Fire Academy.”

For firefighters, including those on the frontlines of deadly fires that ravaged California this year, having an essential training institution “shut down under the presumption that there’s waste, fraud and abuse” has been demoralizing, Bashoor said.

Read the full article. FEMA is a division of Homeland Security.

FEMA cancels classes at national fire training academy amid federal funding cuts

CHICAGO — The country’s preeminent federal fire training academy canceled classes, effective immediately, on Saturday amid the ongoing flurry of funding freezes and staffing cuts by President Donald Trump’s…

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