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When a firefighter dies on duty, a small team of federal healthcare workers is often asked to identify what was wrong and how to avoid similar accidents in the future.
That’s what happened in 2020 after two firefighters died in California while searching for an elderly woman in a burning library. It happened in 2023 when a naval firefighter died in Maryland after the floor collapsed in a burning house. And it happened last year in Georgia when the battalion chief died after a semi-trailer truck exploded.
But President Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to fire almost every employee of the Department of Health and Human Services, who is responsible for carrying out these reviews.
At least two-thirds of employees at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, an agency within HHS, were informed that they were fired on April 1 or that it would take place in June. These cuts included seven of the eight members of the Firefighter’s Fatal Investigation and Prevention Program. This is a team studying the deaths of firefighters’ trains, one leisurely investigator told Propublica.
Most uncollapsed NIOSH workers wiped out their desks until the end of the day. The layoffs were very sudden and staff said that the lab animals had no staff to care for staff and had to be euthanized, and the experimental mines used to test protective equipment under the agency’s Pittsburgh campus put the surrounding environment at risk of flooding and pollution.
“It was pure confusion,” another Niosch employee said.
The fatal investigators were investigating the deaths at 20 fire stations when layoff notifications arrived. The probability of these probes being completed is unlikely, investigators said.
“The overall intention of this program was for people to learn through tragedy and for some to learn what happened to some.
The administration’s move will also halt the initial research into the causes of cancer cases among thousands of firefighters, disrupting programs that provide medical care to paramedics in response to terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center.
Propublica spoke with five NIOSH employees who led or contributed to the firefighter health initiative and received layoff notifications. They demanded most anonymity, fearing retaliation from the administration.
“The existence of Niosh is a hard-earning move for Americans to have a healthy and safe working environment,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, vice president of the United States Government Employees Federation Local 3840, representing agency employees. “This is an attack on NIOSH employees and federal employees, but it is also an attack on American workers in general.”
Neither the White House, which called for shots of many cuts from the administration, nor the government’s efficiency, responded to requests for comment. A NIOSH spokesperson introduced the questions to HHS.
HHS Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made some official indications that aspects of the World Trade Center program could be spared, but remained detailed. A department spokesman said in a statement that programs required by the law (such as some of those focused on firefighters’ health will continue to operate.”
They did not answer follow-up questions about how these programs continue once staff are finished.
“It breaks my heart.”
The investigation, conducted by the Firefighter Fatal Investigation and Prevention Program, will be launched at the request of the fire department that suffered the victim. The findings are shared with firefighters’ families in the hopes of offering a closure. The report will then be published, allowing the broader fire community to step up its steps to avoid similar losses.
Investigators said the Trump administration had already hammered the program right after the inauguration, but initially banned the investigators from conducting research, communicating with other agencies and publishing reports. The department ultimately allowed some of the victim reports to be made public, but the rest remained unfinished.
“It’s breaking my heart that we’re just destroying these programs that have made great strides in protecting the health and safety of our fire community,” the investigator said.
Layoff notices received from HHS stated that many of the agency staff terminations are “as your duties are identified as unnecessary or substantially identical to the obligations being held elsewhere in the agency.”
“HHS’ leadership is grateful for your service,” the notification states.
Federal firefighters face a difficult year and in the face of climate-length wildfire seasons, cuts in spending are cancelled to reduce burns prescribed to reduce flammable vegetation and termination of hundreds of fire support staff.
“It’s extremely frightening that we are trying to reduce the health benefits of firefighters and first responders when we need to strengthen these efforts and personnel,” Forest Service firefighters said.
Dismantling the world’s largest firefighter cancer research
On April 1st, the Trump administration also began firing many of its staff working on the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer.
That creation in 2018 was a groundbreaking victory in a long-standing battle to study why firefighters suffer from certain types of cancer at a much higher rate than the general population. Both Congressional rooms unanimously passed the bill and created a registry. Trump signed it into law during his first term.
In a statement, HHS said the program required by law remains intact, but did not answer questions about whether staff will be reclaimed to continue running the registry.
Wild firefighters usually don’t wear respiratory tracts while exposed to high levels of smoke. And firefighters in protective clothing wear while fighting active flames and contain high levels of PFA, or “eternal chemicals,” associated with various types of cancer. However, the exact cause of some cancers that occur at a high rate among firefighters is not well understood. For example, endemic to women, such as the ovaries and cervix, have recently been linked to firefighting.
Since the registry was launched in April 2023, more than 23,000 firefighters have signed up to participate, and the research team has recently launched an outreach campaign to attract 200,000 participants. This series of data led NIOSH researchers to explore many lacking questions, including the NIOSH scientists who worked on the program told ProPublica that led to cancer that particularly harmed female firefighters, a NIOSH scientist.
Among the thousands who signed up were federal wild firefighters. The decision to abandon such research is intrusive, firefighters told Propobrica. “I wanted something to happen in all of that research and they would protect the wild firefighters.”
The dented IT department quickly took the registry portal to register firefighters offline.
The white supremacist terrorogram network is said to have influenced teens who were accused of killing their parents and plotting to assassinate Trump
“It’s devastating,” said Judith Glover, an associate professor at Rutgers School of Public Health and a co-chair of the board, advising the registered research team. She said the study was “the greatest effort ever made to understand firefighters’ cancer,” but it’s an effort that simply cannot be resumed after the researchers running it are fired.
Diane Cotter became an activist when her husband, a career firefighter, developed prostate cancer, fought for funding research, including the registry. Although she is a Kennedy supporter, Cotter said the administration has gone too far in cutting down programs and health initiatives of other first responders, such as the World Trade Center programme, known as “sacred.”
“It’s very important to keep a line on these studies,” she said.
