Washington, D.C. - Today, Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee Peter DeFazio (D-OR) blasted Republican leadership for failing to act on bipartisan, House and Senate legislation that would treat extreme wildfires the same as other natural disasters and end the need to borrow from fire prevention efforts to pay to fight fires. Dozens of fires have burned over 800,000 acres in the Pacific Northwest alone this year and the federal agencies tasked with fighting the fires anticipate they will run out of money in the next month. The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (H.R. 3992), introduced by Reps. Mike Simpson (R-ID) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR) and co-sponsored by DeFazio, would provide immediate funding to fight wildfires and ensure that agencies can continue to perform other important fire prevention and restoration activities.
DeFazio has recently led Democratic efforts in the House to force a vote on the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. Using what’s called a discharge petition, DeFazio and others are trying to bypass Speaker Boehner and Republican leadership to allow a quick vote on the legislation. The petition must reach 218 signatures to force the up or down vote. Currently, 182 Democrats have signed the petition. No Republicans have signed yet.
“What has this House of Representatives done while the bone-dry West has gone up in flames? Nothing. Not even a hearing on this bipartisan, common sense legislation to fix our wildfire funding crisis. They blather on endlessly about all sorts of things-wasting time on dozens of meaningless conspiracy theory driven investigations. Can Congress take some action on the forest fire crisis that is staring us in the face right now? The House needs to wake up, smell the smoke and pass this bipartisan, bicameral reform that will help us fight and prevent wildfires," said DeFazio. See DeFazio’s floor speech here.
The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act currently has 104 co-sponsors, including 52 Republicans. The legislation would end the cycle of fire-borrowing by treating catastrophic wildfires like similar major disasters such as floods and hurricanes. Under the bill, routine wildland firefighting costs, which make up about 70% of the cost of wildfire suppression, would be funded through a normal budgeting process. The true emergency fire events, which represent about 1% of wildland fires but eat up 30% of the budgeted funds, would be treated like similar major natural disasters. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) are the original sponsors of the Senate legislation (S. 1875).
The proposal would immediately free up as much as $412 million, which could be used for a variety of programs to reduce fire risk and remove hazardous fuels.
In April, House Natural Resource Committee Democrats released a report that shows that deep budget cuts have hindered efforts by the U.S. Forest Service (Service) and the Department of Interior (DOI) to fight catastrophic wildfires in the last few years. The report found that fire suppression funding for the Service was slashed nearly in half over the last few years, from $1.4 billion in FY2010 to $850 million in FY2012. These cuts have forced the Service and DOI to “borrow", or transfer funds, from other fire prevention and restoration programs to respond to the extreme wildfires of recent years and fill shortfalls in suppression funding.
The Forest Service in 2013 alone redirected more than $500 million to firefighting from other programs, while the Interior Department redirected more than $34 million.
In just 2013, the Service borrowed from many important programs, including the following:
* $183 million from Restoration of Forest Lands and Improvements;
* $40 million from the National Forest System;
* $30 million from Brush Disposal; and
* $30 million from Improvements and Maintenance.
The Wildfire Disaster Funding Act would fix the “fire-borrowing" issue.
FIRE STATS
* 19 large uncontained fires have burned more than 500,000 acres in Oregon.
* Oregon’s wildfires have burned more than 916 square miles, nearly the size of Rhode Island.
* 7 large uncontained fires have burned more than 320,000 acres in Washington
* In total, dozens of fires have burned over 800,000 acres in the Pacific Northwest.
* 12,800 firefighters and support personnel have been dispatched to Pacific Northwest to fight these fires
* Both Washington & Oregon have declared states of emergency.
* In the last 24 hours, lightning has caused 25 new small fires in Oregon
All of these fires are not only costly to fight, but have caused irreparable harm to the local economies with evacuations in place resulting in losses of much needed tourism revenue during the peak of summer vacation season, and losses to the resource based economy like the timber industry whose already dwindling resources are going up in smoke.
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