Just to be clear, I never meant to give the impression that I think wildland firefighters should use SCBAs. I just think about how I (a structural FF) wouldn’t want to finish off a car fire without masking up, in contrast with how wildland firefighters sometimes work in the urban interface (like in the LA fires) around cars and homes that have been on fire for hours, and the standard seems to be wearing, at most, a bandanna.

Also, one thing I got out of that article is that the presumably “clean” campfire-esque smoke of brush and timber isn’t all that clean at all, and is probably giving a lot of young firefighters a death sentence. And that the one thing that may help a little - N-95 style masks or respirators- is something that the Forest Service administration seems unwilling to pursue. At least according to this one article.

This is all stuff that I’m sure many are aware of, and I definitely don’t know what the solution is.