November 24, 2024
The American Property Casualty Association (APCIA), along with several partners and stakeholders, has written a letter to U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Leadership urging action on legislative solutions that are aligned with Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission policy recommendations.
The letter requests that leadership pass bipartisan wildfire prevention and resilience bills before the end of the year and points to the commission’s final report, which was delivered to Congress last September and “provided several essential findings that describe what is needed to break the cycle of severe wildfire risk, damage, and loss,” according to the letter. “[Among] these, the commission found that we must shift our overall approach to wildfires from reactive to proactive; there is broad agreement that investing in proactive mitigation, planning, preparedness, and recovery is both effective and essential to prevent the growing severity of wildfires.”
The letter adds that actions taken “to reduce risk must encompass both the natural and built environment; much of community wildfire risk and the potential for future losses due to wildfire is related to the potential for embers and radiant heat to spread between structures,” the APCIA notes.
Legislation Introduced
“APCIA has worked to advance legislation based on or aligned with the commission’s recommendations to Congress, including the House-passed Fix Our Forests Act, H.R. 8790, introduced by House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Arizona) and Rep. Scott Peters (D-California), which seeks to increase the pace and scale of forest management, and establishes a Community Wildfire Risk Reduction Program to better coordinate federal agencies and wildfire risk reduction actions in the built environment,” states APCIA. “The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin (I-West Virginia) and Ranking Member Joe Barrasso (R-Wyoming) have been working on a bipartisan package of forest management bills that could also be passed in the lame duck.”
Furthermore, the House passed the Fire Weather Development Act, H.R. 4866, introduced by Rep. Mike Garcia (R-California) and Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-Colorado), to develop accurate fire weather and fire environment forecasts to improve wildfire predictions, and Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced the Fire Ready Nation Act, S. 4343, which would “establish a fire weather services program within NOAA to improve wildfire risk communications and forecasts.”