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More immigrants are joining crews to fight wildfires

THELMA GUERRERO
Statesman Journal

July 3, 2006

"They can make more money than they make in the field or in Mexico," said John Berger, the owner of the Philomath-based National Firefighters Training & Carding Association.

The work, which pays $10 to $15 per hour, is dirty and back-breaking, said Berger, whose company conducted the class that Rodriguez attended in mid-June.

Half of the estimated 6,000 private firefighters in the Northwest who are contracted to state and federal governments are immigrants, according to a recent report by the inspector general of the U.S. Forest Service.

It's not known how many of those are undocumented.

Debbie Miley, the executive director of the National Wildfire Suppression Association, a group that represents more than 200 private-sector fire contractors, said that contractors are encouraged to oblige by state and federal hiring laws.

"I'm sure we have some folks out there that hire undocumented workers," Miley said. "It's up to the policing agency to enforce immigration laws, but they haven't been able to do a good job of that because they don't have the adequate manpower to do so."

In Oregon, that agency is the Oregon Department of Forestry, which administers contracts with private-sector fire-crew contractors.

"Our goal is to have an effective, safe and legal firefighter force," said Rod Nichols, an ODF spokesman.

Under the agency's contract agreement, private contractors are required to check the legal status of their crew members.

Violators are reported to federal immigration authorities, Nichols said.

Undocumented immigrants have been fighting wildfires for the past several years, the report says.

Of the 2,700 private firefighters who were trained last year by Berger's company, 92 percent were Hispanic, the company says.

Whether any of them were illegal immigrants is not of concern to Berger.

Last month, the Forest Service said that it will work with immigration officials to identify illegal immigrants working on fire crews and to improve the process of identifying violators.

Closer to home, ODF soon will begin using a federal database that can quickly verify a worker's Social Security number, Nichols said.

Also this year, the agency will enforce a 2003 language rule that calls for firefighting-crew leaders to be proficient in English .

Additionally, if a fire crew has members who do not speak English, the crew leader must be proficient in both English and the language of the fire crew, Nichols said.

That's not a problem for Jeronimo Montero, the owner and president of Sunrise Reforestation, a private fire contractor in Aumsville.

"I think if crews have people who speak only Spanish, then the crew leader should speak Spanish in addition to English," Montero said. "It's a safety issue.

"Lives can be lost if a crew member doesn't understand what he's being told."

tguerrero@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6815