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The U.S. Forest Service has fought decades of efforts to better protect its crews — sending them into smoke without masks or warnings about the risks.
Southwest Oregon August 2018
Northern California September 2018
Northern California August 2020
Southern Oregon September 2023
Western Nevada September 2024
Central Utah August 2025
Hazardous fumes Firefighters who have fallen ill shared videos from their time on the front lines.
In chronological order, Alex Plascencia; Brian Wangerin; Duane Boyd; Mr. Plascencia; Darren Clifford; and a firefighter who wished to go unnamed.
Published Aug. 17, 2025Updated Sept. 7, 2025, 9:48 p.m. ET
The smoke from the wildfires that burned through Los Angeles in January smelled like plastic and was so thick that it hid the ocean. Firefighters who responded developed instant migraines, coughed up black goo and dropped to their knees, vomiting and dizzy.
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Seven months later, some are still jolted awake by wheezing fits in the middle of the night. One damaged his vocal cords so badly that his young son says he sounds like a supervillain. Another used to run a six-minute mile and now struggles to run at all.
Fernando Allende, a 33-year-old whose U.S. Forest Service crew was among the first on the ground, figured he would bounce back from his nagging cough. But in June, while fighting another fire, he suddenly couldn’t breathe. At the hospital, doctors discovered blood clots in his lungs and a mass pressing on his heart. They gave him a diagnosis usually seen in much older people: non-Hodgkin lymphoma, an aggressive cancer.
It would be unthinkable for urban firefighters — those American icons who loom large in the public imagination — to enter a burning building without wearing a mask. But across the country, tens of thousands of people who fight wildfires spend weeks working in toxic smoke and ash wearing only a cloth bandanna, or nothing at all.
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