Firefighters struggle with staffing shortages amid record wildfire season

Wildfires have burned more than 8.5 million acres of land in the U.S. this year, and at the peak of the season, there weren’t enough people or equipment to fight them.

When Cody Turcotte arrived to fight a wildfire scorching homes in Spokane, Washington, last month, there weren't enough people at the scene to control it. His team of five engines joined just a few others that had been battling the blaze alone for hours, as its flames rapidly spread."You're getting embers casting down on the bushes and on the back porch, lighting furniture on fire," Turcotte said. "And you're three people on a fire truck, and you're like, 'How the hell do I protect these eight homes?'"Sixteen hours into that shift, Turcotte said his team hadn't received an update about engines they'd requested earlier for support. At that point, he recalled, their supervisor told them: "Nobody's coming tonight.

Keep working." But, later, with houses still burning around them, the team was reassigned to another fire that had broken out nearby. More help was needed there to fight it, given how many properties were under threat.Other firefighters have described similar circumstances this summer, telling CBS News that a nationwide shortage of resources, including firefighters and equipment, left crews struggling to manage the turbulence of this year's record wildfire season."The fires that we're seeing now are quickly becoming large, campaign fires, and they're happening much more frequently," said Turcotte, a firefighter for 17 years. "We're able to respond, but man, we're just