WASHINGTON - More acres may burn, but more lives will not be risked due to an anticipated budget shortfall for wildfire fighting, a Forest Service official vowed.

But members of a firefighting safety panel assembled in response to a particularly lethal year for firefighting aviators said their safety recommendations are not being heeded.

Forest Service assistant director of aviation Tony Kern told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that fires that do not threaten lives might be allowed to burn.

"Obviously we will function within the constraints of the budget we are given," Kern said. "I am willing to accept that more acres will burn, but I will not accept that any lives will be put at risk."

Kern and Bureau of Land Management director of aviation Larry Hamilton said that they were working on a plan that would not risk the lives of pilots or communities near forests.

In 2002, 11 airtankers that were used to fight wildfires were grounded after six fire crew members died in two airtanker crashes and one helicopter crash. The grounding reduced the size of the airtanker fleet from 44 to 33.

Both planes that crashed were operated by Hawkens & Powers Aviation, a Greybull, Wyo., company that contracts with the Forest Service to provide firefighting tankers.

In response to the accidents, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth and Bureau of Land Management Director Kathleen Clark created a five-member Blue Ribbon Fact Finding Panel.

Blue ribbon panel co-chairman and former Clinton administration National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall said that the panel's recommendations have not been heeded.

"The present system has not been fixed and it is certainly a situation that needs to be addressed," Hall said.

Airplanes used by contractors are subject to lower safety standards than federally owned and operated planes and no federal agency has authority over aviation contractors.

"The safety record of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters used in wildland fire management is unacceptable," said panel co-chairman and Texas State Forester Jim Hull. "The level of safety for both contractor and governmental aerial firefighting operations is lower than can be financially justified and is less than expected for any responsible employer."

Hull and others blamed the poor safety record on "mission muddle" and the firefighting "culture."

"While the passion and 'can do' spirit of firefighters is admirable, it has masked agency mismanagement, and contributed to overaggressiveness in piloting large air tankers," Hall said.

Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., called for standards and questioned the decision to ground some of Hawkens and Powers' planes.

"It is clear to me that contractors have been operating under inadequate standards," Thomas said.

"We cannot continue to have this happen. There were more than seven million acres of land charred last summer because we were dragging our feet in the bureaucratic mud instead of dousing fires. We will face a bigger challenge this summer if our aerial firefighting fleet is reduced."

Hawkens & Powers director of operations, Duane A. Powers, said that even though the company's planes have been inspected and are safe, the federal government has grounded them.

When Kern countered that the planes had not been "grounded," Thomas said, "You cannot contract with them, which effectively grounds them."

Company attorney Tassma A. Powers said that the number of federal contracts that the company receives has declined from 11 in 2002 to three in 2003.

Although the coming fire season is expected to be bad, Congress has reduced the amount that is set aside to fight wildfires.

Bosworth has said that the agency could face a deficit of close to $1 billion if the 2003 fire season is similar to last year's record-breaking fire season. Under the 2003 spending bill the Forest Service receives about $420 million to fight fires, which is about $1 billion less than was spent to battle the 2002 fires.

"As the Blue Ribbon Panel identified, safety has a price and the funding for aerial firefighting program appears to be either inadequate or ineffectively distributed," Duane Powers said.

BLM director of aviation Hamilton said that the planes are often employed in situations where they are not needed.

"We call it 'political retardant' when the local congressman calls and says that there is a television camera filming a fire and he wants to know why there is not an airtanker there," Hamilton said.