WASHINGTON — Congressional staffers are apologizing for betting on how many acres will be burned each year.
“Someone sitting in a cushy chair in an air-conditioned office, taking wagers, while our men and women are out there fighting in the heat and hell of the fires, that bugs me,” Lynnette Hamm of Boise, whose 24-year-old son, Caleb, died battling a wildland fire last summer, said on Thursday.
Caleb Hamm’s father, David, agreed: “It’s really a bad joke to us.”
The pool was run by Frank Gladics, who is responsible for national wildfire issues as a top Republican staffer on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, an advocacy group representing all branches of federal firefighters, complained this week to Gladics’ boss, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
“Such a ‘pool’ trivializes the loss of lives and property to wildfires and the heroic effort of our brave federal wildland firefighters each season who risk their own lives to protect our nation’s natural resources, its citizens and their real and personal property from the ravages of wildfires,” association President Casey Judd wrote the senator.
Robert Dillon, spokesman for the Republicans on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Thursday the pool won’t happen again.
“We certainly understand this is in poor taste, and it’s been stopped,” Dillon said. “There was no disrespect meant, and we are horrified anybody would think we disrespect the sacrifices the firefighters have made.”
Dillon said Gladics started the office pool in 2003 because of his frustration with Forest Service wildfire management. At the time the issue was the agency’s decision to ground aging aircraft.
“Out of the frustration with that decision Frank started a pool on how many acres would burn each year. … Gladics has been working for many, many years with the Forest Service to improve how they handle forest fires. Unfortunately, that frustration boiled over to running this office pool,” Dillon said.
Dillon said Gladics, who was a firefighter at one point himself, has apologized to the family of Caleb Hamm for the pool.
Lynnette Hamm did not sound satisfied. She said Thursday that, given Gladics’ background, “the more he should be aware of how that would look.”
“What do I think should happen to the staffers? Well, you don’t want to print that,” she said.
The existence of the pool first became public last week when an email announcing the 2011 results was forwarded to an environmental website called grist.org. Last year, 8.7 million acres burned across the United States, the third most on record. Committee staffer Chuck Kleeschulte won the pool.
The prize isn’t money, but rather one of Gladics’ joke hats (like a wizard or pig-with-wings hat) or a bobblehead. The email forwarded to grist.org said the rules have participants also guess, in case there’s a tie, how many fire-fighting planes will crash, become unusable or be grounded during the year.
Judd, president of the Idaho-based Federal Wildland Fire Service Association, said his group shares frustration with Forest Service fire management. But he said this isn’t the way to express it.
“Nobody’s more frustrated than the firefighters themselves,” he said. “Let’s get some work done here.”
Dillon said the pool was a bad idea, but he hopes the spotlight will bring more attention to Forest Service management issues.
Sean Cockerham: (202) 383-6016. Cockerham is the Washington correspondent for the Idaho Statesman.
