Comments on: Fire contractor sentenced to 10 months in prison

By: John

John — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:55:10 +0000

How dare you insinuate that “other contractors watch what they are doing”. I am an engine contractor. I am also an instructor who is certified by a private organization and a state fire marshal’s office. I am proud of the work I do. I try to maintain a high level of integrity. I think most people in the wildland fire world, be they a private company or a government entity, do good work.

There is probably a bad apple in every barrel. It sounds like Mr. Monington commited a crime and was convicted of it. Hopefully we won’t see him in the wildland fire business again. Are there other bad apples out there in the private or public world? There probably are. Let’s set high standards and strive to attain them.

I obviously don’t know the whole story but let’s not forget that it was a contractor’s organization that was “looking at fire records” and raised the red flags about Mr. Monington in the first place.

By: Ely Dave

Ely Dave — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:19:31 +0000

I think the IC trainee on the last fire I was on in the Ely District must have forged his certs and quals becuase he was/is an idiot, but he was really good at acting like a badass.

By: pickles

pickles — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:40:56 +0000

I am involved with a fire contractor investigation for wire fraud as well.

I am just thankful that people are looking at fire records now and I hope they keep it up. Someday, someone will get killed or seriously injured. Then the IC or other overhead on the federal side will be to blame when it’s not there fault~

The people I worked for were not giving employees the whole wild-land fire refresher. There were other training issues that I saw as well.

I got called and grilled in person by the OIG here in California for an R5 contractor. If they are charged and prosecuted they face % years in prison and a 250,000 fine.

I hope if they are truly guilty and that can be proven, that they go down and it makes the other contractors watch what they are doing.

The nice thing either way, is that this will weed out some of the bad people.

There could be more to the story, but I do not know how many people or how many separate charges they are looking at.

By: B. Morgan

B. Morgan — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:05:20 +0000

It’s good he was caught. Those are some very critical positions.

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:54:06 +0000

Right.

The original indictment in federal court in Rapid City, SD was for two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud. So it makes you wonder if there were any other law violations with which he, or the next Monington, could be charged.

By: Emmett

Emmett — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:43:40 +0000

So the Lesson Learned is that, if you are going to forge Fire Quals documents, hand carry them to the certifying office rather than using the US Mail system; or maybe FedEx or UPS??