As wildfire season rages across Idaho, Oregon and the West, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators – including Idaho’s Jim Risch – are urging the Senate to pass a wildfire funding fix included in new legislation to address funding for floods and other natural disasters.
A wildfire funding fix similar to the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, which Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Idaho Senator Mike Crapo first introduced in 2013, was included in July in legislation under consideration by the Senate Banking Committee to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program.
The Risch bill included in the new legislation would end the cycle of underfunding fire suppression that currently forces federal agencies to steal from fire prevention to fight blazes.
The language included in the Senate flood mitigation bill from the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act would end “fire borrowing” by funding the largest wildfires from a similar disaster account used to fund other natural disasters.
