SEPTEMBER 2008: AROUND THE STATE
Season fuels
fire business
STATEWIDE It was tragic but not surprising that the nine people
who died in a helicopter crash in Northern California Aug. 5
were working for a company based in Oregon. The vast majority
of the private companies on call to fight wildfires from
Florida to Washington state are based in Oregon, and the
tragedy served as the latest reminder of just how dangerous
this work is.
Wildfire fighting used to be a government job. But rising
workers’ compensation claims, falling timber revenues and
shrinking budgets compelled the U.S. Forest Service to begin
using private crews in the 1980s. This trend accelerated in the
late ’90s, with the Oregon Department of Forestry leading
the way to privatization. ODF set up a system to oversee a pool
of contractors with hourly rates set in advance, awarding
contracts based on cost and proximity. The system worked well
enough that it went national, and the number of 20-person fire
crews registered with the ODF jumped from 62 in 1994 to 175 in
2008, most of them working for Oregon-based companies. Rod
Nichols of ODF estimates that up to 4,000 people work as
contract firefighters in Oregon.
Debbie Miley, executive director of the National Wildfire
Suppression Association, estimates that 70% of the
nation’s private wildfire fighting resources is based in
Oregon. That adds up to some serious revenue when you consider
that California alone is expected to spend more than $260
million fighting fires this year. The Forest Service is
expected to exceed its $1.2 billion budget for private
firefighting contracts this season.
This year calls went out early and often to Oregon
companies such as GFP Enterprises out of Sisters, which
dispatched two crews to Northern California and a third to Big
Sur in July. GFP President Don Pollard says he hires about 150
temporary workers each season, most of them men 18 to 30 years
old, including college students off for the summer. “They
can make a lot of money if they’re needed and if
they’re called, and the same goes for us,” says
Pollard.
The same also goes for hundreds of businesses such as
Stewart’s Firefighter Food Catering out of Redmond and
“A Team” Wildfire out of Baker City, which provides
wild-land fire engines and crews for the Forest Service on an
as-needed basis.
Columbia Helicopters, the Aurora-based private company that has
been fighting wildfires for decades, supplements its as-needed
firefighting work with exclusive-use contracts. By early August
Columbia pilots had fought fires in Florida, Virginia, Utah,
Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Columbia VP Todd Petersen says
revenues from firefighting are unpredictable.
“We’ve had seasons where we hardly made anything
and seasons where we grossed $20 million. It depends on the
nature of the season, and this is looking like a busy
one.”
That should translate into more business for Evergreen Aviation
out of McMinnville as well, another wildfire helicopter
specialist that also has developed a huge Supertanker
firefighting aircraft made from the frame of a Boeing 747.
The enormity of Oregon’s firefighting industry, not to
mention the latest firefighting tragedy, has some skeptics
questioning whether privatization was a good idea after all.
Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United
for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, refers to the trend as
“The Halliburtonization of fire management: Some people
are making a lot of money and the taxpayers are footing the
bill.”
BEN JACKLET
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