Daily Montanan: Wildland Firefighters’ Union “Criticizes Sheehy’s Comments As ‘Out of Step’”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, November 1, 2024

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rehm@mtdems.org

NFFE: “Sheehy’s disdain for firefighters is out of step with true Montanans and the rest of America. It is elitist and self-serving. Federal wildland firefighters and other first responders deserve better, as do all the residents of Montana”

Criticism from union comes after it was revealed that Sheehy repeatedly disparaged wildland firefighters
 

Helena, MT – New reporting tonight from the Daily Montanan highlights how Tim Sheehy is facing criticism from the federal union representing wildland firefighters, after Sheehy was caught repeatedly accusing the brave first responders of “laziness,” “greed,” and “milking every fire” in order to rack up more overtime pay.

A blistering statement issued yesterday from the National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) reads in part: “Sheehy’s comments are not only unfounded and disrespectful of wildland firefighters across the country, but they also show a severe lack of understanding of the essential and dangerous work these brave men and women do to defend our country from devastating fires – especially communities in Montana.”

Daily Montanan: Federal union that represents wildland firefighters criticizes Sheehy’s comments as ‘out of step’
By Blair Miller
November 1, 2024

• The union that represents thousands of federal wildland firefighters this week sharply criticized Montana’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy over passages from his 2023 book in which he said wildland firefighters at times were exhibiting “laziness” and “milking” wildfires for overtime pay instead of pushing to extinguish every fire as quickly as possible.

• “On more than one occasion, candidate Sheehy has baselessly accused wildland firefighters of ‘milking’ fires due to ‘laziness, greed, self-interest, and corruption,’ insisting that public servants on the front lines of the wildfire crisis simply, ‘don’t want to put the fire out,’” Randy Erwin, the National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said in a statement on Wednesday.

• “Sheehy’s comments are not only unfounded and disrespectful of wildland firefighters across the country, but they also show a severe lack of understanding of the essential and dangerous work these brave men and women do to defend our country from devastating fires – especially communities in Montana,” he added.

• The comments from Sheehy cited by Erwin were first reported earlier this month by HuffPost in a story that quoted both Sheehy’s 2023 book, “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” as well as comments he made at an Alabama book signing in March that were recorded and obtained by the news outlet.

• The Daily Montanan has reviewed the passages cited by HuffPost to confirm their accuracy and included other passages from Sheehy’s book in this report.

• The criticism Sheehy received from the federation is also not the first time that Tester’s Senate opponent got in hot water with wildland firefighters over criticism; in fact, it is at least the third.

• Sheehy has also faced criticism from Tester, who accuses his opponent of wanting to sell off federal public lands or give them to counties or the state, and from others from not disclosing his former board membership at the Bozeman think-tank Property Environment Research Center, which has in the past supported transferring federal lands to states.

• HuffPost reported on Oct. 19 passages from Sheehy’s book in which he discusses hanging out at a fire base in Idaho in 2015 and talking with other firefighters. He wrote he told the others he wanted to “hammer this thing down quickly and get it under control.”

• But as HuffPost reported, Sheehy wrote that another pilot suggested they shouldn’t tamp out the fire too quickly: “There’s a lot of overtime pay to be earned out there! We put it out, it’s back on salary!”

• Sheehy wrote in the book that made him realize there was a “troubling undercurrent of complacency” among some firefighters because “there was so much money at stake.” Sheehy wrote that the conversation at the air base “smacked less of concern or common sense than it did laziness – or, worse, greed.”

• HuffPost obtained an audio recording from one of his book-signing events in Huntsville, Alabama, in which he said there were plenty of people who want to let fires burn.

• “And they don’t want to put the fire out because that’s where they get their overtime, that’s where they get their hazard pay. And for a lot of these folks out there – I don’t mean to cast them in a negative light, but it’s just a fact – they don’t want the fire to be put out, because … they make half their annual income on hazard overtime pay during the summer fires.”

• Sheehy’s former business has come under financial strain in recent years. ​​In its second-quarter earnings results news release, the company reported a net loss of $10 million on $13 million in revenue. At the time, Bridger Aerospace said its two multi-mission aircraft would likely fly more than 200 days of firefighting missions this year and most of its planes were being used as of August. Its third-quarter results will be released on Nov. 11.

• It’s not the first time a Montana senator or candidate has been scrutinized for criticizing wildland firefighters. In 2006, U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, was forced to apologize for telling a hotshot crew they had done a “poor job” on a fire while they were awaiting a flight home at the Billings airport.

• Tester would go on to defeat the incumbent Burns that November to win election to the U.S. Senate for the first time by about 3,500 votes.

• And Tester’s opponent in 2012, Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg was criticized by wildland firefighters for filing a lawsuit against the City of Billings Fire Department after a 2008 fire burned his property. He dropped the lawsuit in 2011, but it still featured prominently in advertisements Tester ran against him during the next year.

• Tester defeated Rehberg in November 2012 by about 18,000 votes.

• Erwin, whose union represents around 110,000 federal employees in total, said there has been a shortage of Forest Service and other federal wildland firefighters doing more with less amid larger and more intense fires in recent years. In his statement, he pointed out that Sheehy and Bridger Aerospace “have profited heavily” from federal contracts while those firefighters still struggle to get paid a living wage.

• “Sheehy’s disdain for firefighters is out of step with true Montanans and the rest of America,” Erwin said. “It is elitist and self-serving. Federal wildland firefighters and other first responders deserve better, as do all the residents of Montana.”

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