Conrad Burns, the third-term
Republican senator from Montana, may have done Westerners a
backhanded favor when he cornered firefighters in the Billings
airport and berated them for the job they did on an eastern Montana
wildfire.
Burns reportedly confronted members of the
Augusta Hotshots last month as they were waiting for their flight
back home to Virginia. Based on reports from ranchers in the area,
Burns told the firefighters they had done a “piss-poor job.” Burns
pointed at one firefighter and told Montana state employee Paula
Rosenthal, “See that guy over there? He hasn’t done a God-damned
thing. … You probably paid that guy $10,000 to sit around. It’s
gotta change.”
When the news broke, I marveled at the
gall of a man who has acknowledged receiving more money —
$137,000 — from tainted lobbyist Jack Abramoff than any other
member of Congress. Yet he can still seem publicly outraged by
sooty, blistered laborers raking in less than $20 an hour.
But piling on to Burns’ myopic judgment is too easy. The
good senator stumbled upon an opening for us all to tackle a much
more difficult subject, which is our country’s approach to wildland
fire.
Ecologists overwhelmingly agree that a century of
trying to stamp out every wildfire has left us with national
forests that are alarmingly dense, unhealthy and more dangerous
than ever. And we’ve done it all at great expense. The Government
Accountability Office reports that since 2000, the federal
government has averaged spending more than $1 billion per year to
suppress wildfires. In the 10-year time period between 1994 and
2004, 40 firefighters were killed by fire or falling snags, and 49
aircrew members lost their lives fighting fire. Dozens of others
died from heart attack, heat stroke and vehicle accidents in the
line of fire duty. Only this month, a helicopter pilot and three
firefighters perished in a crash on a fire near McCall, Idaho.
Waging an all-out war against wildfire inflicts heavy casualties.
“It’s gotta change,” as Conrad Burns would say, and there
are signs that “it” — fire policy — might be changing.
Last year, fire was allowed to resume its natural role in more than
430 fires throughout the country, the highest number since the
federal government officially endorsed the practice in 1995. Many
Western wildfires don’t pose an immediate danger to communities or
private property, and the benefits of clearing out underbrush and
chokingly dense forests are evident. The costs are significantly
lower than for those fires that are actively suppressed, both in
dollars and lives. But the wildland fire-use policy, as it is
termed, is still not without its risks or its critics, who fear
what fire can do to ever-closer housing developments if a blaze
gets out of control.
One way lobbyists and special
interest groups help sway public policy is to treat our U.S.
senators and representatives and their staff to fact-finding trips.
The telecommunications and broadcasting industries regularly send
Sen. Burns to Las Vegas, for instance, to find facts of one sort or
another. Maybe one of these altruistic companies could sponsor a
tour of some of the wildland firefighting community’s key locales.
A suggested itinerary would include a junket to the following:
Glenwood Springs, Colo., to hike the 1.5-mile steep and
rocky Storm King Mountain Memorial Trail, where 14 firefighters
perished in the South Canyon Fire of 1994.
The Chewuch
River Valley west of Winthrop, Wash., where a rock wall features
photographs of the four young firefighters who died in the 2001
Thirtymile Fire.
Indianola Helibase north of Salmon,
Idaho, to see two bronze statues that memorialize Jeff Allen and
Shane Heath, both consumed by the 2003 Cramer Fire.
Even
without going on my tour, I note that Sen. Burns came to his senses
and issued an apology for his harsh treatment of the Augusta
Hotshots. Much like the actor Mel Gibson, he allowed that “In
retrospect, I should have chosen my words more carefully.” He added
that he should have “simply thanked those who worked hard to put
out the fire.”
But instead of a public relations apology
in an election year, we need leaders who are willing to change a
fire policy that stifles our nation’s forests and endangers
firefighters year after year. If Sen. Burns’ thoughtless outburst
affords us the opportunity to reflect on what is really at stake
with our national fire policy, we should simply thank him for his
hard work.
Gina Knudson is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). She is a writer in Salmon,
Idaho.
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