A Bipartisan Effort to Control Wildfires

A bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by a California Democrat, a Colorado Democrat and two Montana Republicans to create a federal response to the wildfire crisis that has beset the West and other parts of the country.

Montana Republicans Sen. Tim Sheehy and Sen. Steve Daines and California Democrat, Sen. Alex Padilla and Colorado Democrat, Sen. John Hickenlooper want to create the Wildfire Intelligence Agency.

“The scale of the wildfire crisis demands a singular, whole-of-government wildfire intelligence center to foster cross-agency collaboration and save lives,” Padilla said.

Hickenlooper said the agency would coordinate information with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Interior.

“Wildfires don’t care about state lines or forest service boundaries,” Hickenlooper said. “A centralized wildfire intelligence center will speed our response to fires and promote cross-agency collaboration to tackle them.”

The center will increase the monitoring and imaging that the above agencies cannot do. It will also coordinate federal response with the impacted states and the agencies of those states, with tribal groups, academia and with the private sector controlling wildfire lands.

“As fire season rapidly approaches for Montana, we need all hands on deck to prevent catastrophic disasters,” Daines added. “Sharing information and resources between agencies will undoubtedly help Montana communities take preventive measures and better combat fires and coordinate response efforts.”

How this will fly in Congress is anybody’s guess. With the new Trump administration’s talks about what to do with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), putting a new agency in charge of anything might be difficult.

Source link: The Hill — https://bit.ly/42R7FI1