Federal Union slams Montana GOP Senate candidate’s ‘disdain’ for wildland firefighters

A union representing thousands of federal wildland firefighters excoriated Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy after he accused firefighters of dragging their feet to put out inferno and “milking” disasters for overtime pay.

“Sheehy’s comments are not only baseless and disrespectful to firefighters across the country, but also show a serious lack of understanding of the essential and dangerous work these brave men and women do to protect our country from devastating fires – especially Montana communities,” Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in a press release dated Thursday.

“Sheehy’s disdain for firefighters is out of step with true Montanans and the rest of America,” he added.

Erwin’s lightning strike comes about two weeks after HuffPost first reported that Sheehy, who made millions running a firefighting airline that it relies a lot on lucrative federal contracts, has repeatedly claimed, with little evidence, that a significant number of firefighters with boots on the ground are standing around while wildfires are raging.

In the 2023 book Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting, Sheehy described an encounter with firefighters battling wildfires in Idaho in 2015. He wrote that a firefighter pilot told him about the fire: “We don’t want it happens too much. rapid. … There’s a lot of overtime pay to be won there! We’re turning it off, it’s back on the payroll!'”

That conversation “felt less concern or common sense than laziness — or worse, greed,” Sheehy wrote. “I wouldn’t call it malice; anyone who gets on a plane or picks up a shovel to fight forest fires clearly has a capacity for kindness and a desire to help. That said, even in positions that are demonstrably service-oriented, there is the potential for self-interest, if not corruption, to lead to a response that is not necessarily in the public interest.”

“If there’s no fire, there’s no money,” he added. “And the faster a fire is put out, the faster the money dries up or goes elsewhere. It might seem ludicrous to worry about a lack of work to keep the wildfire industry busy given the tremendous expansion of the season in recent years, not to mention the dire feeling that firefighters will forever be outmatched against nature. But old beliefs and protocols die hard, and clearly there were some in the industry who saw nothing wrong with milking every fire for what it was worth, despite the risks and the blurring of ethical boundaries.”

This is not the only time Sheehy has hurled such accusations at civil servants who work in the same field as him. Sheehy is the founder of Belgrade, Montana-based Bridger Aerospace, a company that has a fleet of firefighting aircraft, and has consistently highlighted his company’s work in ads and campaign speeches. At a signing the book in Huntsville, Alabama, in April, months after launching his campaign against three-term Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, Sheehy told attendees, “There’s a very real dynamic in wildfires that a lot of these people don’t they want to set fire. outside.”

“They don’t want to put out the fire because that’s where they get their overtime, that’s where they get their risk pay,” he added.

Wildland firefighters are notoriously underpaid for a job that is becoming increasingly dangerous amid worsening climate change.

In an October post on X, formerly Twitter, Tester called Sheehy’s comments “offensive.”

On her websiteThe National Federation of Federal Employees notes that advocacy for wildland firefighters includes “fighting for stable and competitive pay, improved resources for mental health and physical well-being, adequate housing and more.” In Thursday’s news release, Erwin said the NFFE represents many federal firefighters across the country, including in Montana. And he highlighted the myriad challenges these workers face.

“Wildland firefighters have done more in less than a decade, and the current firefighter shortage puts them and other first responders at greater risk as they work longer deployments, fighting stronger and bigger fires every year,” Erwin said. “Sheehy and his airline have profited handsomely from taxpayer-funded contracts to fight wildfires, while many wildland firefighters struggle to pay rent because of low wages.”

He criticized Sheehy’s remarks as “elitist and self-serving”.

“Federal firefighters and other first responders deserve better, as do all Montanans,” Erwin said.

When HuffPost he held out his hand at Sheehy’s campaign last month, a spokesman called HuffPost’s reporting on the GOP nominee “embarrassing” without asking specific questions about his comments — a tactic his campaign has increasingly turned to in recent years. months, based on an apparent endless current of controversies.

While polls previously showed Sheehy with a commanding lead over Tester, a POLL released last week showed the two in a dead heat.