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. forbidden
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.