A House Natural Resources subcommittee will return to issues around wildfire this week, taking testimony on legislation to ramp up the federal response.
Among bills on the agenda for the Subcommittee on Federal Lands are proposals for fast-response standards at federal wildfire agencies and a study recommended in 2023 by a federal wildland fire management commission.
The “Wildfire Response and Preparedness Act,” H.R. 4038, would require the Interior and Agriculture departments to set standards of no less than 30 minutes to evaluate fires and no less than three hours to deploy fire suppression assets.
The bill, by Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), doesn’t mandate that all fires be suppressed, nor does it recommend a standard for when wildfires should be extinguished — more contentious issues in forest management circles.
