U.S. Senator Pushed to Cut Firefighting Aircraft Inspections the Same Month His Former Company Failed One

[erronis]

https://www.propublica.org/article/tim-sheehy-bridger-aerospace-forest-service-inspection
Abe Streep

Reporting Highlights

Changing Oversight: U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy previously ran an aerial firefighting company. After joining Congress, he proposed ending Forest Service inspections of those aircraft.

Failed Inspection: The same month a draft of his plan to end Forest Service inspections leaked, an aircraft at his former company failed an inspection because of a crack in its wing.

Ownership Stake: Sheehy owned up to $15 million in stock in the company, Bridger Aerospace, when he launched his effort to end Forest Service inspections of such aircraft.

A little over a year ago, Sen. Tim Sheehy floated an audacious proposal to reshape the way the federal government fights wildfires. It called for expanding the use of private planes and helicopters to quickly attack blazes while also eliminating the U.S. Forest Service's rigorous airworthiness inspections for those aircraft.

The idea stood to benefit Sheehy, a Montana Republican, personally. Before running for Congress, he founded and ran an aerial firefighting company called Bridger Aerospace, which is known for its scoopers, aircraft built to retrieve water from lakes or oceans and drop it onto fires. Since 2021, the Forest Service has paid Bridger more than $235 million for use of its scoopers, according to public records.

Sheehy's ownership of Bridger is well known, but what hasn't been reported is that the same month the proposal leaked, a Forest Service inspector had discovered a crack in a wing of an aircraft Bridger had presented as ready for service. The scooper had failed the very inspection Sheehy sought to eliminate.

Forest Service inspectors have flagged problems with Bridger's scoopers for years, according to sources and documents obtained by ProPublica under the Freedom of Information Act. The records were heavily redacted by the agency, including the problem that the inspector discovered last April. But a former government official with direct knowledge of the inspection told ProPublica it had revealed a crack in a wing. "It was a big crack," the official said. Other experts said that kind of finding is rare and could have proved catastrophic.