A union representing thousands of federal wildland firefighters excoriated Montana GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy after he accused firefighters of dragging their feet to put out infernos and “milking” disasters for overtime pay.
“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,” said Randy Erwin, the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, 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 blistering takedown comes about two weeks after HuffPost first reported that Sheehy, who made millions running an aerial firefighting company that relies heavily on lucrative federal contracts, has repeatedly claimed, with little evidence, that a significant number of boots-on-the-ground firefighters are standing around while wildfires rage.
In the 2023 book “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” Sheehy described an encounter with firefighters battling blazes in Idaho in 2015. He wrote that one firefighting pilot told him of the blaze: “We don’t want it to go too fast. … There’s a lot of overtime pay to be earned out there! We put it out, it’s back on salary!’”
That conversation “smacked less of concern or common sense than it did laziness — or, worse, greed,” Sheehy wrote. “I wouldn’t call it malevolence; anyone who climbs into a plane or picks up a shovel to fight wildfires clearly has a capacity for goodness and a desire to help. That said, even in positions that are demonstrably service-oriented, there is the potential for self-interest, if not outright corruption, leading to a response that is not necessarily in the public’s best interest.”
“If there is no fire, there is no money,” he added. “And the faster that a fire is extinguished, the sooner the money dries up or goes elsewhere. It might seem ridiculous to worry about a shortage of work to keep the wildfire industry busy given the extraordinary expansion of the season in recent years, not to mention the gnawing sense that firefighters will forever be overmatched 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.”
Michael Ciaglo via Getty Images
It’s not the only time Sheehy has hurled such accusations at public 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 he has consistently highlighted his company’s work in campaign ads and speeches. At a book signing in Huntsville, Alabama, in April, months after launching his campaign against three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, Sheehy told attendees, “There’s a very real dynamic in wildfire that a lot of those people don’t want to put the fire out.”
“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,” 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 “insulting.”
On its website, the National Federation of Federal Employees notes that its advocacy for wildland firefighters includes “fighting for a permanent, competitive pay fix, enhanced mental health and physical wellbeing resources, adequate housing, and more.” In Thursday’s press release, Erwin said that NFFE represents many federal wildland firefighters across the country, including in Montana. And he highlighted the myriad challenges these workers are facing.
“Wildland firefighters have been doing more with less for decades, and the current shortage of firefighters places them and other first responders at greater risk while they work longer deployments fighting hotter and bigger fires each year,” Erwin said. “Sheehy and his arial company have profited heavily from taxpayer-funded contracts to fight wildfires while many wildland firefighters struggle to pay the rent because of low pay.”
He slammed Sheehy’s remarks as “elitist and self-serving.”
“Federal wildland firefighters and other first responders deserve better, as do all the residents of Montana,” Erwin said.
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When HuffPost reached out to Sheehy’s campaign last month, a spokesperson called HuffPost’s reporting on the GOP candidate “embarrassing” without addressing specific questions about his comments — a tactic his campaign has increasingly turned to in recent months amid a seemingly endless stream of controversies.
While polling previously showed Sheehy with a commanding lead over Tester, a poll released last week showed the two in a dead heat.