The Trump administration has laid off nearly all of the staff responsible for investigating firefighter line-of-duty deaths

At least two-thirds of the employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health were notified on April 1 that they had been laid off or will be in June .

The cuts included seven of the eight members of the Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program .

The layoffs were so abrupt, staff said, that lab animals were left without staff to care for them and had to be euthanized.

The National Firefighter Registry for Cancer was a landmark win in a yearslong fight to study why firefighters suffer from certain types of cancer at vastly higher rates than the general population.

The exact causes of some cancers that occur at high rates among firefighters are not well understood.

More than 23,000 firefighters have signed up to participate since the registry launched in April 2023 .