By Steve Geissinger
Inside Bay Area
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sen. Dianne Feinstein acted Wednesday to end “unfair” government denial of benefits to families left behind by about 100 firefighting pilots who have died in crashes since 1976.
A bill by the San Francisco Democrat — which has bipartisan support in both the Senate and House -- would extend federally financed death and disability benefits to contract pilots injured or killed while flying firefighting missions for the government.
They currently receive none because they work for private firms under contract to federal and state agencies.
Feinstein’s aides said she learned of what she called the “loophole” in government treatment of the pilots from MediaNews coverage of a Bay Area widow’s plight. As a result, the measure would extend retroactively to include the woman, Christine Wells-Groff, whose husband died in a collision of two state air tankers in 2001 over a Mendocino County blaze.
But the senator wrote her legislation to extend even further — back to 1976 — to encompass all of the crashes listed in reliable government records.
Feinstein said that “these contract pilots and crew members assume the same risks” as government firefighters when they climb into government-owned firefighting aircraft.
“Yet they are denied equal benefits if they are killed or injured in the line of duty,” she said. “This is fundamentally unfair.”
Statistics maintained by Associated Airtanker Pilots, a group that has long lobbied for death-benefits legislation, indicated Feinstein’s bill encompass as many as 100 pilots’ families. AAP says 160 aerial firefighters have died in the line of duty since 1958.
The U.S. Forest Service and Cal-FIRE are two of the largest customers of air tanker contractors. After Larry Groff’s death, state officials and Cal-FIRE set up a benefits program for the pilots it contracts with to fly government-owned air tankers -- but did not make the program retroactive.
Christine Wells-Groff has taken her federal denial-of-benefits lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not yet decided if it will review the case. Wells-Groff is seeking $250,000.
Feinstein’s bill would extend back to include the crash of the state’s chief air tanker pilot, Roger Stark in Calaveras County in 1992. His death, and controversy surrounding it, helped prompt the upgrade of California’s fixed-wing firefighting planes.
U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming, is jointly sponsoring the bill.
U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, a Wyoming Republican long interested in closing the loophole, introduced a companion measure Wednesday in the House, with Democratic co-sponsors.
Lawmakers said contract firms provide inadequate insurance. Private life insurance for government contract firefighting pilots is either too expensive or simply unavailable due to the dangers of the job, often compared to flying in combat.
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