Wildfires Bring Jobs and Money to Reservations-Disasters Mean Steady Wor

[radfringe]

ummmm...from the "1984 - things that are good for the economy" department
list includes: weak dollar, exporting jobs

Wildfires Bring Jobs and Money to Reservations
Disasters Mean Steady Work for Some Indians
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; Page A01


RONAN, Mont. -- Francis Cahoon, born and raised here on the Flathead Indian Reservation, knows it sounds coldhearted, but he is hoping for another summer of ferocious wildfires across the Rocky Mountain West.

Last year, when fires burned a quarter-million acres in Montana, Cahoon said that he and his three sons grossed $250,000 fighting them. Most of that came from leasing three wild-land fire engines -- four-wheel-drive pickup trucks that Cahoon had rigged with water tanks -- to the state at $1,300 per engine per day. This year he has added a bulldozer ($1,685 a day) to his fire-suppression armada.

If all goes well -- if the federal government's forecast for another "above normal" fire season proves correct and parched western forests explode into flames as they have for the past five summers -- Cahoon and his sons will have steady work for months, making as much as $5,675 a day.

---snip---

Not everyone, of course, is making serious money the way Cahoon and sons are. But federal fire managers and tribal officials agree that an abnormally long run of "good fire years" has visibly improved lives and lifted spirits on Indian reservations.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. I'm worried he'll have plenty of work.

I barely escaped last year after some fires in my neighborhood became massive, I was evacuated, etc., but it only got within a couple miles. However, judginb by the creeks and springs, it's even drier this year than last.