In a survey released Tuesday, 60 percent of the full-time wildland firefighters responding said they would retire or otherwise cut back their fire management roles for the upcoming fire season.
The two largest groups said they would either make themselves less available for fire assignments (36 percent) or decline to serve as incident commanders (23 percent.)
The Internet-based poll was one of the first concrete signs of the fallout from federal prosecutors' unprecedented decision last year to criminally charge a U.S. Forest Service incident commander for his role in the deaths of four Central Washington firefighters in 2001 at the Thirtymile forest fire.
But nearly 40 percent of the full-time respondents said the prosecution would have no effect on their willingness to oversee fires.
"There's a lot of dedicated people out there who would say that fire is their life. They feel a certain amount of loyalty to their employer. We honor them for that," said executive director Bill Gabbert of the International Association of Wildland Fire, one of the nation's leading firefighting lobby groups.
More than 3,300 firefighters responded to the survey, conducted between Jan. 28 and Feb. 15. Gabbert described that as a significant number "which tends to indicate how important these issues are to the wildland firefighters out there in the field."
Forest Service officials previously said they had heard only anecdotal reports that incident commanders, the primary supervisors in charge of managing a fire, were leaning toward backing out of the job, seen as more of a risk since the criminal charges. Classes for new incident commanders are still filling up, officials said.
Whether the survey numbers hold true will likely be seen this spring when the Forest Service and other federal fire agencies print their annual round of "red cards," which list each firefighter's qualifications.
Poll coordinators did not predict a margin of error, but said they had no indication that anybody had tried to manipulate the results. The survey was designed to take results only once from responding computers.
The Forest Service, the largest of the five federal agencies which manage the country's wildland fires, estimates that it has 10,000 employees dedicated to firefighting and another 15,000 with part-time fire duties.
The agency's fire management officials in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for reaction to the survey Tuesday afternoon.
In an interview last week, a top Forest Service official said the agency is working with its lawyers to try to offer employees guidance on the potential for criminal liability.
The discussion has been hampered by the lack of case law on the topic, said Marc Rounsaville, the deputy director for fire and aviation management.
In a related move, Forest Service officials hope to issue new guidelines on incident management, perhaps as early as this summer. Under development for the last couple of years, the guidelines focus more attention on making sure that decisions are guided by general safety principles rather than bogging down supervisors in a specific checklist of rules.
But Rounsaville said the Forest Service was not pushing to eliminate criminal charges for decisions made on the fireline.
Contrary to comments by some firefighters, Rounsaville said it would have been inappropriate for the Forest Service to lobby against the federal prosecutors' decision to charge Ellreese Daniels, who faces trial on four charges of involuntary manslaughter and seven counts of lying to investigators in connection with the Thirty-mile deaths.
"We don't expect immunity, nor does that make much sense when you think about it in a pragmatic fashion. That avenue for criminal investigation and prosecution always needs to be available," Rounsaville said.
The year after Thirtymile, Congress passed a law requiring an independent investigation of all firefighter fatalities caused when crews are overtaken by flames.
The laws under which Daniels was charged existed well before that, but the inspector general's new wildland fire unit played a key role in compiling the information used against him.
Gabbert, the IAWF executive director, said the association doesn't object to wildland deaths being investigated. But Gabbert said the inspector general lacks the specialized fire expertise needed to conduct a credible investigation. The Forest Service and other agencies have built up that experience over several decades, he said.
A separate firefighter lobbying organization, the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, has said it is trying to find lawmakers who are willing to clarify the intent of the law. An update on those efforts was not available Tuesday.
The Forest Service is looking into developing a system that would separate criminal investigations from safety reviews in order to allow employees to freely pass on lessons learned, Rounsaville said.Yakima Herald-Republic
