WHO GUARDS THE GUARDIANS?
AUTONOMY WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY IS A RISK WILDLAND FIRE CANNOT AFFORD
BY MICHAEL HILL
For most of my career in the U.S. federal government, I worked within a wildland fire organization that valued centralized leadership, standardized policy, and institutional accountability. Particularly within the U.S. Forest Service’s aviation program, our operating procedures were not simply administrative requirements – they were the accumulated lessons of decades of experience, many written in response to accidents, fatalities, and investigations. Every policy represented someone else’s hard lesson so that others would not have to learn it again.
It was not a perfect system. No organization is. But it was a robust one. It provided consistency across forests, regions, and agencies while establishing checks and balances that protected both the mission and the people carrying it out.
Lately, however, I have begun to see a different philosophy emerging.
Recently, I sat quietly through a meeting involving the newly organized U.S. Wildland Fire Service and a tribal partner. While the discussion covered organizational relationships, what I heard beneath the surface was something larger. Agencies are trying to define themselves in an increasingly complex fire environment while simultaneously seeking greater organizational independence: each wants more freedom to make its own decisions, establish its own priorities, and operate with less outside influence.
That conversation reminded me of one I’d had several months earlier with a US Forest Service Forest assistant fire management officer; he described an effort within the Southern Region where some Forest fire management officers want to free themselves from the administrative oversight of their forests.
The forest fire management officers’ reasoning is straightforward: they believe that only fire professionals truly understand the complexities of managing a local fire program. Therefore, they argue, fire managers – not line officers or administrative leaders – should have greater authority over fire operations and program management.
At first glance, the argument is compelling. Wildland fire has become extraordinarily complex.
Fire managers possess specialized knowledge that few outside the profession fully understand. Fire managers often make critical decisions under extraordinary pressure, and many of them understandably become frustrated when administrative structures appear disconnected from operational realities.
Greater autonomy can encourage innovation, accelerate decision making, and allow local leaders to tailor programs to local conditions rather than forcing every situation into a national template. But there is another side to the discussion that deserves equal attention.
The question is not whether fire managers are capable of exercising greater authority. Many unquestionably are. The question is who ensures accountability once that authority exists.
The question is not whether fire managers are capable of exercising greater authority. Many unquestionably are. The question is who ensures accountability once that authority exists.
One lesson I have learned over a career in public service is that organizations should never rely solely on the character of individuals, no matter how competent or well-intentioned they may be. Some leaders enter management because they genuinely want to improve their organizations. Yet history – both inside and outside government – shows repeatedly that concentrated authority, when left without effective oversight, eventually produces uneven outcomes.
Sometimes those outcomes are relatively minor. Other times they affect careers, organizational culture, operational safety, or public trust.
Checks and balances exist for precisely this reason.
For decades, centralized administrative oversight served as a counterweight to individual authority.
Policies, independent reviews, financial controls, aviation standards, safety boards, and multiple layers of supervision were not obstacles to good leadership. They were safeguards against human nature. They protected employees from favoritism, taxpayers from waste, and agencies from becoming collections of independent fiefdoms.
Many of those traditional structures are changing.
As fire organizations become increasingly decentralized – whether intentionally or through organizational evolution – we risk creating administrative vacuums. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do organizations. Authority rarely disappears; it simply shifts. Without carefully designed systems of accountability, oversight can gradually be replaced by localized power structures where policies vary, standards drift, and decisions become increasingly dependent upon the personalities of individual leaders rather than institutional principles.
History offers no shortage of examples. Whenever centralized institutions weaken without replacing their oversight functions, authority tends to fragment. The result is often not greater freedom but the emergence of independent power centers, each operating according to its own priorities. In political history, these have been called warlords. In organizations, they become isolated kingdoms with little external accountability.
That comparison may sound dramatic, but the underlying organizational principle is universal.
Wildland fire is entering an era that demands flexibility. Fire seasons are longer. Interagency coordination is more complicated than ever. Partnerships with tribes or First Nations, states, local governments, and nongovernmental organizations continue to expand. Local leaders need room to adapt. But flexibility without accountability is not resilience: it is vulnerability.
The debate should never be framed as centralization versus decentralization. Both have strengths. Instead, we should ask a more important question: How do we preserve the institutional safeguards that generations before us built while giving today’s leaders the flexibility they genuinely need?
Every generation of firefighters inherits more than aircraft, engines, and equipment; we inherit organizational structures that were shaped by the successes, and often the tragedies, of those who came before us.
If we dismantle those structures in pursuit of autonomy, we have an obligation to replace them with equally effective systems of oversight. Otherwise, we risk losing not only consistency but also the institutional integrity that has allowed federal wildland fire organizations to serve the public for generations.
The issue is not whether local leaders deserve greater authority. Many do. The issue is who guards the guardians.
That question has challenged governments, militaries, and public institutions for thousands of years. It remains just as relevant to wildland fire management today.
Michael Hill has worked as a hotshot, helicopter rappeller, smokejumper and fire aviation specialist within the United States fire management agencies. He is an Australian firefighter and has a strong background in worldwide contract military aviation. Hill is an associate editor for Wildfire magazine and hosts a YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@ TalkingWildfireWithMichaelHill.
