A union representing thousands of federal wildland firefighters slammed Montana Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy after he accused firefighters of delaying putting out infernos and “milking” disasters for overtime pay.

“Not only are Sheehy’s comments baseless and disrespectful to wildland firefighters across the country, they also show a serious lack of understanding of the essential and dangerous work these brave men and women perform to defend our country from devastating fires, especially the Montana communities. said Randy Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, in a Press release dated Thursday.

“Sheehy’s disdain for firefighters is out of step with that of real Montanans and the rest of America,” he added.

Erwin’s Hard Takedown Comes About Two Weeks After HuffPost first reported than Sheehy, who made millions running an aerial firefighting company that depends largely with lucrative federal contracts, has repeatedly claimed, with little evidence, that a significant number of firefighters on the ground are standing by while wildfires burn.

In the 2023 book “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” Sheehy described an encounter with firefighters fighting fires in Idaho in 2015. He wrote that a fire pilot told him about the fire: “We don’t want it to go out too much. ”. fast. …You can earn a lot of extra hours! We turn it off and it goes back to salary!’”

That conversation “smacked less of worry or common sense than of laziness or, worse, greed,” Sheehy wrote. “I wouldn’t call it malevolence; Anyone who gets on a plane or picks up a shovel to fight forest fires clearly has a capacity for kindness and a desire to help. That said, even in positions that are clearly service-oriented, there is the possibility that self-interest, if not outright corruption, will lead to a response that is not necessarily in the best interest of the public.”

“If there is no fire, there is no money,” he added. “And the sooner a fire is put out, the sooner the money will run out or go somewhere else. 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 lingering sense that firefighters will always be outmatched against nature. But old beliefs and protocols are hard to eradicate, and there were clearly some in the industry who saw nothing wrong with milking every fire for what it was worth despite the risks and blurring of ethical boundaries.”

It is not the only time that Sheehy makes accusations of this type against public servants who work in the same field as him. Sheehy is the founder of Belgrade, Montana-based Bridger Aerospace, a company that has a fleet of firefighting aircraft, and has consistently highlighted his company’s work in advertisements and campaign speeches. in a book signing In Huntsville, Alabama, in April, months after launching his campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, Sheehy told attendees: “There’s a very real dynamic in wildfires where a lot of those people don’t want to put the fire out. ”. outside.”

“They don’t want to put out the fire because that’s where they get their overtime, that’s where they get their pay for dangerous living conditions,” he added.

Wildland firefighters are notoriously underpaid for a job that is becoming increasingly dangerous amid worsening climate change.

In an October post on X, formerly Twitter, Tester called Sheehy’s comments “insulting.”

in your websitethe National Federation of Federal Employees notes that its advocacy for wildland firefighters includes “fighting for a permanent, competitive wage solution, improved mental health and physical well-being resources, adequate housing, and more.” In Thursday’s news release, Erwin said NFFE represents many federal wildland firefighters across the country, including Montana. And he highlighted the countless challenges these workers face.

“Wildland firefighters have been doing more with less for decades, and the current firefighter shortage puts them and other first responders at greater risk as they work longer deployments fighting bigger, hotter fires each year,” Erwin said. “Sheehy and his arial company have benefited greatly from taxpayer-funded contracts to fight wildfires, while many wildland firefighters struggle to pay rent due to low wages.”

He criticized Sheehy’s comments as “elitist and selfish.”

“Federal wildland firefighters and other first responders deserve better, and so do all Montanans,” Erwin said.

When HuffPost came closer to Sheehy’s campaign last month, a spokesperson called HuffPost’s reporting on the Republican candidate “disgraceful” without addressing specific questions about his comments, a tactic his campaign has increasingly resorted to in recent months amid of an apparent endless stream of controversies.

While previous polls showed Sheehy with a commanding lead over Tester, a survey published last week showed the two in a tie.