Congressman’s District Ablaze After Calling Wildland Firefighters Unskilled

As I pulled out of my driveway in Idaho today, I saw the first sign of summertime in the West. It was not a picturesque scene of a sunrise over still water, or wildflowers in bloom. It was not a vision of my child frolicking in a pool or running through our sprinklers. Today I saw the haze, and the red halo of the sun, blood orange in the sky as it rose through the lens of the smoke-filled sky. This is summer in the Western United States and, as its local residents, we are becoming all too accustomed and even more complacent about this accepted “normalcy” as an addition to our summers. If you are pondering a move west these days, you had better have this form of natural disaster pretty high in your decision-making criteria. You also better spend some time and due diligence understanding this issue. Maybe even pack your inhaler and lifetime supply of Zyrtec.

Moreover, if you happen to be an elected official in any state affected by extreme wildfires and their consequences, you had better spend a significant amount of time familiarizing yourself with one of the largest disasters and crisis potentials your state, district, community, or city will potentially face. I am saying this, very pointedly, because on July 2, Congressman Tom McClintock of California’s 4^th District took aim at wildland firefighters, calling them “unskilled laborers.” He did this in an interview with the Union Democrat, which is a local newspaper that serves Tuolumne and Calaveras counties in California.

To be clear, about Congressman McClintock’s statement, I will include it here:

“Wildfire firefighting is hot, miserable work, but it is not skilled labor,” he said.

Just a week later, a wildfire in this very Congressional district called the Beckwourth Complex underwent explosive growth requiring evacuation orders. It also may cause the possible closure of Highway 395, and currently is threatening a local rail line. Multiple other roadways are closed and obviously residents, local businesses, and the local economy are impacted heavily. As this fire stands and continues to grow, with only nine percent containment, it has already cost approximately $10 million, and has 48 crews, 118 engines, 16 helicopters, and 1,256 people responding to the incident.This fire, by California standards, and to the hardened veterans of fighting extreme wildfires in California, is just another day at the office. This is no record setting, apocalyptic inferno — yet. It just happens to be the first large fire depositing a smoke screen onto the entire western United States, and just happens to fall less than a week after the Congressman in this particular district shot his mouth off about wildland firefighters being “unskilled labor” in his home state. Congressman McClintock, karma is cruel and just sometimes. Enjoy answering to your constituents and answering to one of the, in fact, most skilled workforces on the planet. Better stock that liquor cabinet, sir, you’re in for a long PR nightmare.

Now, to fully explore this issue, I dove deep into Tom McClintock’s extensive tenure as a politician. If you visit his own website, there happens to be an entire page related to forest fire and all of his public statements and position statements dating back through 2017. I read all of these in their entirety and quite frankly, the man does appear to have a bit of an educated viewpoint. However, I say “appears to” because he is a career politician (20 years in office) who has authored only four bills in Congress that have become law. None of those bills have anything to do with public land policy, wildfire mitigation, or forest ecosystem, or even logging or timber economics. To do one better, between 1997 and 2002, 77 of 81 bills McClintock authored never even came to committee floor or to a vote. Excuse me, if this does not seem to be a record of action, sir.

If I am going to give Congressman McClintock even all the benefit of the doubt and say that he is, in fact, very educated, very actionable, and very well connected in regard to forest management and wildland fire policy, then his comment calling wildland firefighters, or as the government actually calls them, forestry technicians, a form of “unskilled labor” is even more insulting and demoralizing to these people. These people are in fact highly trained, highly skilled in a very specialized skill set, and in fact, often times very highly educated even by collegiate standards. These people, on average, work approximately 500 to 1,000 hours of mandatory overtime in any given fire season and often at a pay rate that is lower than an entry level employee at a local McDonalds. These people are accustomed to working 16-hour days, 14 days in a row before they are given a measly two days off to sleep in a bed and, hopefully, do some laundry and tend to their families and health. These people have an approximate 85 percent divorce rate, and a suicide rate 22 percent higher than the average citizen. These people actually get none of the benefits firefighters receive in every other fire industry.

I also would like to point out another job that might be miserable work and has no prerequisite of any kind of skill set or education: an elected official in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet, the average salary is reported as $174,000 for that particular job. I cannot even imagine what this figure might actually be for someone in this position for 20 years such as our good gentleman, Mr. McClintock. It also does not encompass all of the perks and benefits that people in that job enjoy. In fact, Congressman McClintock is already getting two pensions for his time serving our country in this capacity. He is set to start drawing on a third pension before he formally retires. That also doesn’t account for the thousands of dollars he receives from special interest groups, perks of fully-funded travel and vacation, and other monetary benefits he has undoubtedly received in 20 years in office. Sir, to say it bluntly, this kind of makes you a hypocrite as you stand so solid in your convictions that people should get paid directly proportional to their skillset or education requirements for their positions, wouldn’t you say?

To further highlight this, I’m going to enlighten our dear readers to the pay scale by which nearly all federal wildland personnel are compensated. This scale is the illustrious GS scale. It’s antiquated, outdated, and hugely flawed in ways I could never fully describe here. But feast your eyes on some numbers then I’ll explain a little bit about where wildland firefighters, or forestry technicians, to use the government’s term, fall on this. The following is the starting base pay for each GS level for 2021:

GS-1      $19,738

GS-2      $22,194

GS-3      $24,216

GS-4      $27,184

GS-5      $30,414

GS-6      $33,903

GS-7      $37,674

GS-8      $41,723

GS-9      $46,083

GS-10    $50,748

GS-11    $55,756

GS-12    $66,829

GS-13    $79,468

GS-14    $93,907

GS-15    $110,460

A first year, entry level wildland firefighter is coming to a government agency usually rating out at a GS-3 or GS-4. Those would be the most “unskilled” in the Congressman’s opinion. Again, far below even minimum wage in most of the states in the Western United States.

Current vacancies for a Hotshot Superintendent are currently listed at starting at the GS-9 rate. Again, far below even the national standard for poverty level in the United States if supporting more than one individual. Not to mention, to qualify for this position, most Superintendents have nearly 15 years in dedicated fire service with hotshot crews, at a minimum. To try and offer a bit more context, a hotshot crew, to the civilian public, can be equated literally to the do-it-all special forces of wildland fire. First in, last out, the infantry extraordinaire of the wildland fire community, and a Hotshot Superintendent is the biggest bull in that bullfight.

To use another example, a Smokejumper Base Manager, basically the coolest and most skilled dude in all the Smokejumping land, rates at a GS-11 or GS-12, and obviously is not only qualified in parachuting into a wildfire, but in fact, operationally in charge of approximately 50-plus other people who are equally qualified, the aircraft necessary for such operations, and all of the other responsibilities you can even conjure to mind possibly related to such a job. Yet, $66,829 is still under the threshold for low income if trying to support a family of four in the United States. I can’t even touch what we are paying our highest skilled fire personnel, our Type 1 Incident Commanders, the one and only person who is solely responsible for all the resources, strategies, and tactics the incidents you all get to see on CNN each summer entail. A job with such a high degree of casualty potential and responsibility, it is industry standard to, in fact, pay for massive liability and insurance policies to even take these positions.

There literally is not a single position operationally in wildland fire that even rates out at a GS-15, the highest on this scale, which is still $60,000 less than what a starting Congressman earns in a single year. Basically, the federal government could get three (3) of the most top-notch, highly qualified, highly-skilled, battle-tested, saltiest bros in the wildland firefighting land for the price of one Congressman who may or may not ever actually write a mere four pieces of legislation, even if given a 20-year tenure in office to do so. I mean, if we are looking for using our funds efficiently in government, I might see an area for improvement.

Congressman McClintock, you have run on a position of responsible government spending for years, and you have dozens of fire resource bases in your home district in California. Please feel free to take a tour, meet this workforce of “unskilled laborers,” and just for funzies, maybe ask about their skillset or experience, or even, if you’re so inclined, who in the room may have a Master’s or a Doctorate among them. You will be outgunned, sir. I’ll bet every dollar I have on it.

Sincerely yours,

A former “unskilled laborer” who was paid $13.82 an hour (at my peak) to rappel 250 feet from a hovering helicopter into wildland fires for six seasons before the civilian/private sector paid me $41.50 an hour for far less skilled, less demanding work as a “professional.”