"Not allowed" does indeed leave out a lot of context. A big part is indeed related to heat-exhaustion. N95s do trap a lot of heat against your face in conditions that are already wicked hot, they trap sweat, and can cause irritation as they rub against your face while doing rough work. And given that wildland firefighters are generally much farther away from help compared to structure firefighters, heat exhaustion can easily become deadly, so you do everything you can to mitigate it. But there's a lot more to it as well.
The thing about respiratory protection when wildland firefighting is that a lot of the decisions about it are being made by people who have never done a single day of wildland firefighting. A lot of those people are well intentioned, but without that knowledge their suggestions are going to be pretty useless.
Even when wildland firefighters are basing themselves out of an engine, they are still carrying at least 30lbs of gear and hiking through at least some amount of rough terrain to access the fire. And if they're not basing themselves out of an engine they may be carrying twice that weight, if not more, significantly farther distances in significantly rougher terrain. Adding a full structural fire breathing setup to that is not feasible. It is way to much extra weight.
Then, of course, there's the fact that structural fire breathing setups require tanks that don't last all that long, so to cover the whole time of a wildland fire you'd probably need dozens if not hundreds of tanks per person. Some wildland assignments involve people being in the woods with no access to civilization for days, if not up to two or even three weeks. A tanked system just does not work for wildland.
Okay, so, what about N95s? Probably better than nothing, but they still come with a lot of drawbacks of their own. I've only had a chance to do a quick bit of research, but there seems to be limited public information about flammability testing of N95 masks. There's various FDA standards, and internal testing at companies like 3M, but I could not find a good breakdown of how that testing works. (Could be out there though! Happy to be corrected if it is.) Is it testing every single component of the masks from the elastic straps to the staples holding those straps on? What are the exact temperatures and conditions they are being tested under? A sustained wildfire/shower of sparks from a wildfire is very different than short-term welding sparks or a quick surgical oxygen fire, so how do N95s react to those conditions? (Some of what I found suggested that N95s melt rather than burn, but when the thing is on your face I'm not really sure if that's...better?)
Then there's N95s (or regular respirators with filters) getting clogged. You're not going to be able to just carry a handful, you're going to have to carry A LOT OF THEM, and swap them out consistently. And yes, letting that stuff into your lungs instead isn't better, but the amount of masks you'd need still has to be considered in these discussions. Sure, N95s are much lighter than a full tanked setup, but they still take up space that could be used for other critical needs like water and food (because you've got to carry all that for yourself too!).
And of course you've got the metal nose pieces, which I'd guess aren't going to do anything pleasant to your face in the event flames get close enough to melt the mask.
Point is, with current technology, breathing protection for wildland firefighters is a much more difficult problem than it seems to be on the surface. A lot of the conversations I'm hearing currently are less around encouraging use of them on the line while actively engaged with the fire and more about encouraging them all other times like travel to and from where you're working, and in fire camps, to at least better limit overall exposure.
There ARE some other options out there, like this thing, which is meant to go over an N95:
Source: https://shop.darley.com/product/hot-shield-hs2-wildland-firefighter-face-mask/01t2E00000QZdkVQAT
But they haven't really taken off in any way, and IDK what sort of testing they've undergone either. Also, looking at this one specifically, it kinda seems like it would be a pain in the ass to change out the N95 when it started to get clogged.
There's also these things:
Source: https://o2armor.com/
Which would at least keep gunk out of your nose, and be much smaller, and not be something covering your face and trapping a ton of heat. But I honestly don't know anything else about them when it comes to what they're rated for, how well they work, and how long they last before they're too clogged to breathe through.
At the end of the day it just isn't an easy problem, and it runs into a lot of other problems in wildland fire like how much gear wildland firefighters have to carry, how remote the work can be, how long wildland fires last, etc. It IS a problem that needs addressed, but it's going to take a lot to figure out how.
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