Exposed and Expendable

About the Project

Americans have increasingly witnessed the destructive power of wildfires as they tear through forests and cities, leaving charred landscapes in their wake. But over a year of reporting, Hannah Dreier of The New York Times revealed that the thousands of men and women who fight these fires face a more insidious danger.

For decades, the government has knowingly sent firefighters to work in toxic smoke, hiding the risks while banning them from wearing masks. Now, as climate change drives longer, more intense fire seasons, contract firefighters across the country are falling ill and dying at young ages.

These stories had remarkable impact, including the reversal of a federal mask ban and a new federal law that grants sick firefighters a half-million-dollar payment.

Working on the front lines of wildfires and sourcing inside government agencies, Dreier found:

• The U.S. Forest Service’s own researchers had warned since the 1990s that smoke can cause serious illness. They urged the agency to distribute masks, but it refused, even as fire seasons grew more severe.
• The agency doesn’t include warnings of these health hazards in training materials or handbooks. It said it rotated crews out of bad air, but that was not true.
• The government increasingly relies on contract firefighters, who have no benefits when they get sick. Undocumented workers are given the most carcinogenic jobs.
• The Forest Service ignored the danger of smoke exposure because it did not want to make costly changes to working conditions.
• The Trump administration shut down a registry tracking cancer rates among firefighters.

The reporting began in January 2025, when flames ravaged Los Angeles. Dreier, a California native who covered fires there for years, noticed firefighters were working bare-faced, while residents were told to wear masks or stay inside. She set out to understand why.

Dreier ultimately filed public records requests to eight agencies, reviewed thousands of pages of medical and fire service documents, created several databases and conducted more than 400 interviews.

Collaborating across the newsroom, the Times used video, audio, data and multimedia presentations to bring her findings to life. We embedded footage shot by sick firefighters in each text piece, created a widely shared video investigation, and built an episode of The Daily around emotional interviews with firefighters and their families.

When the government wouldn’t release records of smoke exposure on shifts, Times reporters brought air-quality sensors to the fire line on their own. The result: an interactive piece that stunned even veteran firefighters, who had assumed the air was safe if they were not standing directly in smoke. “This article is the best I’ve ever read,” wrote firefighter Duane Boyd, who developed cancer in his 30s. “It is saving and changing lives.”

The Times worked to ensure the reporting reached a workforce largely mistrustful of mainstream media. We adapted the stories for TikTok and Instagram, where firefighters scroll at night during assignments. Dreier participated in a Reddit AMA with firefighters, and went on a popular firefighter podcast. Spanish translations of the work circulated among immigrant crews.