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Posted on 09/08/2017 4:30:48 PM PDT by mdittmar
Senators: “Please do not forget about wildfires – the natural disaster currently raging through the West”
(Washington, D.C.) – With large fires blazing across Washington state and throughout the West, Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and a bipartisan group of senators urged Senate Leaders Mitch McConnell and Charles E. Schumer this week to include a wildfire funding fix in any future disaster aid legislation that passes through Congress.
Led by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mike Crapo (R-ID), the letter’s signers also include Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Jon Tester (D-MT), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Tom Udall (D-NM).
This week, Congress passed a bipartisan funding bill to help with the cost of fighting the wildfires in western states as part of the disaster and government funding bill. However, the funding included does not fix the long-term problem of consistently underfunding fire suppression, which currently forces federal agencies to steal resources from fire prevention activities to pay for fighting fires, so-called “fire borrowing.”
Wildfires have burned almost 8 million acres of land across the West this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate from their homes, and the U.S. Forest Service has already spent more than $1.7 billion this year to put out fires. In Washington state, recent wildfires this month near Jolly Mountain, Jack Creek, Uno Peak, Diamond Creek, Norse Peak and Archer Mountain have threatened residences, prompted evacuations and negatively impacted the local air quality.
“We stand ready to work with our colleagues in a bipartisan way in Congress to do everything we can to ensure the victims of Hurricane Harvey get the assistance they need,” the bipartisan group of senators wrote. “As we work to assist Texas and Louisiana on the road to recovery, please do not forget about wildfires – the natural disaster currently raging through the West.
“We ask that any disaster aid package or other must-pass legislation that passes through Congress include a wildfire funding fix. This fix is long overdue and people throughout the West desperately need our help,” the Senators added.
With the Forest Service’s fire suppression budget nearly depleted, the agency is likely to have to borrow from fire prevention money to tackle wildfires during the remainder of the fire season.
Here's an old song I like;)
She was calling wild fire
wiiiil iiild fiiire
Maybe the Forest Service/BLM shouldn’t legally attack private property owners for working on their own fire minimization/suppression efforts.
Stupid enviro-wacko policies are causing the fires.
Just print the money!! take away this debt ceiling and lets just have a big fling into feel good land!! Let the children die of food riots when it inevitably collapses . It wont take much more and the politicians that did it will all be hiding in the Indian ocean .
Very smoky here, still in “unhealthy” zone, not quite as bad as yesterday’s “Hazardous.” Amazing what a difference it makes. With rain and possible lighting on the way, we could see more fires start.
A trillion here,a trillion there,it’s not real money anymore.
Who cares. Its worth our children !!
What’s there to stop a thousand Moozlems from throwing a roadside flare out their car windows on the roadside freeways. Sept. 11 is 3 days away.
over half these fires are arson that we lie about.
I am here in Yakima and have been breathing smoke for over two weeks.
In addition, the Jolly Mountain fire took a week before it really exploded. The Forest Service and BLM had time to bring in resources before the real damage was done.
The experts keep complaining about not having enough money. But, the cost has exploded along with the fire. It would have been better to bring in the choppers and scoop planes while the fire was still controllable.
Now there is the additional cost of burned up timber, wildlife habitat and a lot of the land is in scenic areas that are no longer scenic.
The liberals have to stop throwing up barriers to good fire practices. The forests should be thinned (yes, logging) and ranchers should have grazing rights to clear out the flammable underbrush. Those are common sense practices that worked. It didn’t stop all forest fires but it limited them
Yup.
Idiot states that don’t maintain adequate fire breaks can eat the cost themselves.
I don’t understand why the states themselves don’t have a rainy day disaster fund and the power to help their own citizens, in addition to educating their residents about the need to be prepared. Why does the Federal Government need to be involved?
Well, if I were to make a wild assed guess I would think it likely that some large areas which don’t have adequate fire preparation used to have proper preparedness before the bureau of land management declared that it must cease.
Call me a cynic.
But Texas defied the fedgov in the form of the EPA and other states should do the same.
That is so true!!!!!
I seem to remember O ignoring and denying help to Red States when they needed it.
Someone posted on another thread about a certain group causing the fires. Jihad?
**Led by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR)**
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