Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is alarmed about the growing impact of the government shutdown on wildfire preparedness. Typically, federal agencies use the winter months to hire and train firefighters in advance of the upcoming fire season, and to perform fire prevention work—like tree removal and controlled burns—that are more difficult or dangerous to carry out during active fire seasons. Training and prevention programs are both currently on hold. Cortez Masto joined a group of senators saying, “The failure to reopen the government puts peoples’ lives at risk by undermining their ability to respond to wildfires and will only serve to delay critical forest restoration and safety projects.”