Washington – Until Saturday, Patrick Montague investigated fire deaths for the federal government.
A 46 -year -old Kentucky native, the rare combination of skills and experience of Montaoge, academic training, technical knowledge and 26 years of combat, made it a good option for the Matality Research of Firigeros of the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety and health Prevention Program. In almost two years at work, he said, supervisors had repeatedly praised him for his work.
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But that is not what the Trump administration said when it dismissed it abruptly, along with thousands of other employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, Saturday night. In a form of form, they told Montago that it was vulnerable to the termination because it had not yet completed a two -year proof period like because “its performance has not been adequate to justify greater employment.”
Three of the five people in their program, which was created by Congress to reduce the risk that firefighters died in the fulfillment of duty, were left similar, he said.
Billionaire Elon Musk, a Temporary White House Advisor who works through the Government Efficiency Department, has followed the promise of President Donald Trump to “drain the swamp” in Washington cutting federal programs and dismissing government workers for thousands . But Montague, who lives in the Metropolitan Area of Louisville, barely qualifies as a “deep state” bureaucrat determined to frustrate the Trump agenda of the intestines of the capital of the nation.
“I don’t think the president of the United States or Bobby Kennedy knows that we exist,” he said about the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “most people would agree that there is a waste that there is a waste That could be cut, but I think there are better ways to do so than on the back of people “focused on the first response safety.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not answer a list of questions presented by NBC News, even if Kennedy believes that firefighters’ safety is a low priority for taxpayers and if the risks to firefighters have been reduced enough to that do not require so much study.
For some agencies and units within the agencies, throughout the federal government and the country, the dismissal of a large part of the workforce could make it impossible to carry out its mission.
Louis Lago, a former head of the Battalion of the Baltimore Fire Department who worked in the same Fatality Research Unit that Montague said he fears for his children and other firefighters.
“My concern is that the program is going to dissolve, and I have two children at work,” said Lago, who worked in the unit from Myrtle Beach, SC. ”I think this has a great benefit to the safety and well -being of the Fire service “.
He said that the view comes partly because of the experience of using the agency’s reports when he directed diving operations. During a recovery mission, a security diver could not locate a trapped diver. But a second security diver found the driver trapped and rescued him. The use of two security divers instead was a method that Lago learned from Fffipp’s reports, he said.
Now, with only two of the five researchers who are still working, he and others familiar with the program say they could not survive.
“If enough people end, they can’t work,” said Micah Niemeier-Walsh, the main administrator of the American Federation of Local Government 3840 in Cincinnati. “They are simply taking an ax to things. They are not being aware of who is being affected.”
“Programs such as the Firefighters’s Fatality Research and Prevention Program are an investment in public safety,” said Edward Kelly, general president of IFFF. “The lessons learned through the investigations of the death of the service line help prevent future incidents and save American lives. We hope and trust that the Trump administration will prioritize these critical programs, because when firefighters are safer, more secure, So are the people who take an oath to protect. “
The mortality program was not the only one centered on the firefighter affected by dismissals within NIOSH in the last week. Federal workers who maintain the National Firefighters Registry for Cancer, which collects voluntarily provided information to track and combat cancer deaths among firefighters, were also allowed to go, according to union officials.
The registration was created by a measure that Trump signed in the law in July 2018. Both cameras of Congress unanimously passed. Last summer, in the Republican National Convention, Trump led a moment of silence for Corey Encouratore, a firefighter who was killed during a failed attempt in Trump’s life. Trump brought the understanding jacket to its inaugural demonstration in January, has often spoken to the lifeguards.
The dissonance between Trump’s praise to firefighters is part of the reason why the shots have left fire security defenders, workers and employee unions scratching their heads.
“I certainly thought that would bill in some of the decisions that were made,” Lago said. The termination notice he received from the government, which accused him of not doing proper job, chopped despite the fact that it was most likely with his own stellar performance reviews, he added. NBC News did not see his reviews or mounting.
“I couldn’t understand where they could lie blatantly in an official document about an performance problem,” he said.
