Federal union that represents wildland firefighters criticizes Sheehy’s comments as ‘out of step’

By Blair Miller for the Daily Montanan

Montana 2024 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy. (Courtesy Tim Sheehy campaign)

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.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Sheehy campaign primarily attacked Tester and said Sheehy’s firefighting work was an effort to protect public lands.

“It’s absolutely absurd to even suggest Tim doesn’t support the firefighting community he proudly serves in, just like it’s insane to call a former Navy SEAL who married a Marine veteran anti-veteran, but Jon Tester is losing, and his desperate last-ditch efforts to save his political career are embarrassing,” spokesperson Jack O’Brien said.

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, a former Navy SEAL, earned millions through his aerial wildland firefighting company founded in 2014 with his brother, Bridger Aerospace, as well as a drone company he later sold that assisted in wildfire fighting and reconnaissance. Bridger Aerospace has made the bulk of its money off federal firefighting contracts, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and personal disclosure filings show.

Sheehy faces three-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Senator Jon Tester in this year’s election in what is one of the most expensive and closely watched races in the country. The race is seen as likely to decide party control of the U.S. Senate, and polling between the two candidates has shown a close race. Tester is the only statewide elected Democratic official in Montana heading into the election.

Sheehy stepped down as CEO of Bridger Aerospace earlier this year, but his campaign has highlighted his firefighting work as showing he is on the “front lines” of protecting public lands in Montana and that he built a veteran-based business in Montana.

“As an aerial firefighter and water bomber pilot, Tim proudly risks his life, along many other brave firefighters, to protect our public lands and communities,” Sheehy’s spokesperson added in a statement Friday. “It’s no wonder a career politician like Tester, who never risked his life to serve others, and his liberal allies are working overtime to tear down a combat veteran and aerial firefighter who created a successful veteran-led Montana business and Montana jobs fighting wildfires after valiantly serving as a Navy SEAL.”

But 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 for 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 October 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.”

He said while anyone who fights wildfires “has a capacity for goodness and a desire to help,” 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.”

“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,” Sheehy wrote. “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.”

He goes on to say that he believes the government is to blame, saying it is presenting a false narrative that “everything is just fine” but that firefighters are under-resourced.

“I do believe that most of the problems with the wildfire industry stem more from the governmental and bureaucratic side of the equation than from the business side,” Sheehy wrote. “But as I like to say about the wildland fire community, you will find an amazing bunch of people, dedicated public servants …(sic) trapped in a frustrating and often bewildering bureaucracy.” 

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.”

Firefighters, depending on their rank, earn between $26,000 and $50,000 in base pay annually and may receive hazard pay, a 25% increase of the base rate, when performing certain hazardous duty, according to the Forest Service. They can also receive overtime pay of 1 1/2 times their base pay.

As of 2022, about 98% of all wildfires were suppressed before they reached 100 acres in size, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Since 2009, federal policy guidance has allowed agencies to manage wildfires to benefit the land if they do not threaten firefighter or public safety, and during the past three years, strategies have shifted to allow for wildfires to burn in order to restore landscapes.

“Climate change and prolonged fire seasons will continue to try land management agencies,” the Forest Service wrote in a report published in June. “The ability of managers to meet ecological objectives and the Forest Service’s targets outlined in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy may depend on opportunistic use of fire within fire-adapted systems to reduce the risk of high-severity wildfires over the long term, caused by an excess of accumulated fuels in these forests.”

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 November 11.

It’s not the first time a Montana senator or candidate has been scrutinized for criticizing wildland firefighters. In 2006, U.S. Senator 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.”