Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced on Sunday more than $21 million in new funding for wildfire risk reduction; she spoke during a press conference with Senator Jeff Merkley at the Oregon Department of Forestry Southwest District headquarters, according to a report by KEZI-TV News in Eugene, Oregon.
She said fire management agencies plan fuel management work on more than 170,000 acres in Oregon this year.
District Forester Mike Shaw said there’s good news with better snowpack this year. “I do project that we’re going to have another challenging fire season,” he said. “All hands on deck is the approach that we’re taking and all wildland fire agencies are working together.”
Senator Jeff Merkley, chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, joined Haaland and Shaw to emphasize their collaboration on wildfire prevention. “We’re really focusing on the front end of forest treatment and on the back end of having the resources to fight the fires,” Merkley said. “The key word here is collaboration.”
Aside from the millions in federal funding allotted from his bipartisan infrastructure law, Haaland said that President Biden is also supporting increased pay, better housing, and more full-time jobs for firefighters.
Vice President Kamala Harris joined other national leaders in the nation’s capitol to announce the new funding to help protect high-risk communities. “Our acres of burned land have doubled,” Harris said. “We need to change how we think about how we respond to fires. We need to prevent them, not just respond after they’ve started.”
KRDO News reported that $197 million in federal funding will be made available this year to 100 communities in 22 states and 7 Native American tribes. “There were 36 states and 45 tribes that applied for the funding,” Harris said. “This is the result of legislation I started years ago while I was in the Senate.”
She said she was motivated by recent destructive fires in her home state of California. “This will be the first of many grants,” she said. “We’re committing $1 billion over the next four years and $7 billion over the next ten years.”
A 7-acre wildfire in the area of Highway 14 and Arrowhead, according to a report by 9NEWS-TV, resulted in evacuations for residents of Poudre Canyon in Larimer County on Sunday afternoon.
Voluntary evacuations were issued for a stretch of the canyon; the Arrowhead Fire was reported by the Canyon Lakes Ranger District at 50 percent containment by late afternoon.
The Coloradoan reported that the fire was burning near the U.S. Forest Service’s Arrowhead Lodge visitor center, 34 miles west of Ted’s Place along Colorado Highway 14, also known as the Poudre Canyon Highway. The sheriff’s office issued evacuation notices from the Lodge east to Riverside Drive, and residents were told to gather essential items and prepare to evacuate. A Red Cross evacuation site was established at Cache La Poudre Middle School in Laporte, and a portion of Highway 14 was closed between Arrowhead Lodge and Rustic.
Federal wildland fire funding may increase by nearly 25 percent in 2024 if President Biden’s budget priorities are adopted by Congress. The budget, released March 9, reflects firefighters’ concerns and a rising political commitment to face increasingly complex wildfire conditions.
Initiatives include a long-term fix for wildland firefighter pay equity, an 8 percent increase in the number of federal and Tribal firefighters, and expansion of prior commitments to interagency response and research, fuels management, aviation and remote sensing initiatives, and community-based prevention programs.
The summary fact sheet released by the Office of Management and Budget has a single mention of wildfires, woven into a $24 billion investment to “build communities’ resilience to floods, wildfires, storms, extreme heat, and drought brought on by climate change.”
Wildfire and wildland fire management funding in the 2024 budget appear in joint and specific releases by the lead agencies with federal wildland fire management responsibilities. The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposes a 28 percent increase and the Department of the Interior proposes a 21 percent increase over 2023 funding.
News releases from both departments note the priority for funding the proposed raises in base pay for federal and tribal firefighters. The budget summary notes that funding will pay for fuels as well as fire management. The proposal calls for “More than $4.2 billion for the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the Interior wildland fire and hazardous fuels management” that will “implement comprehensive workforce reform, including increased firefighter pay, additional firefighting capacity, enhanced mental and physical health support, and improved housing options for firefighters.”
As detailed in a March 9 USDA release, “The budget includes increases of $180 million for USDA and $72 million for DOI to raise base pay for Federal and Tribal wildland firefighters, with additional premium pay costs covered out of funding requested for suppression operations.” The USFS Explanatory Notes page for the 2024 budget includes additional details and annual performance indicators. One indicator of note for 2022: on page 233, it’s reported that nearly 3 million acres of fuels treatments were accomplished, with 57 percent using prescribed fire despite a prescribed fire pause (followed by the release of the National Prescribed Fire Program Review) put in place after prescribed fire escapes in New Mexico. The 2024 budget increases hazardous fuels targets to 4 million acres.
The DOI release expands on the appropriations request: “The President’s 2024 Budget proposes legislation and funding to implement significant reforms to increase the Nation’s investment in the wildland fire management workforce. The cornerstone of these long-term reforms is a permanent increase in pay. The Administration proposes legislation to establish a special base rate salary table for wildland firefighters, create a new premium pay category that provides some additional compensation for all hours a wildland fire responder is mobilized on an incident, and establish a streamlined pay cap that provides waiver authority to the Secretary using specific criteria.”
The pay-raise focus has garnered support from the National Federation of Federal Employees. In a March 13 release, NFFE President Randy Erwin praises President Biden for “taking this critical step in addressing the wildfire crisis and improving the lives of federal wildland firefighters across the country.”
Erwin noted that pay reforms will “help recruit and retain skilled personnel … While there is still much work to do to ensure our wildland firefighting workforce has the resources to be sustainable in the coming years, I am proud that our members are seeing results from their advocacy.”
Approval of the budget faces the challenge of a divided Congress. A Republican-majority House may push back against the overall budget, resulting in a flat-lined continuing resolution in place of an approved 2024 budget. Additionally, implementation may be shaped by legislation that may result from reports and recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. The commission’s final call for recommendations from the public (including firefighters) closes on March 22.
The Alaska Division of Forestry and Alaska Interagency Coordination Center’s early season wildfire outlook is now available, and normal fire potential is expected from March through June, except for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, where above-normal potential exists beginning in April. AICC’s Fire Weather Program Manager Heidi Strader said that low snowpack could result in a busy early season out on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
“Keep in mind that we have few indicators to tell us how mid-summer will be at this point,” Strader said. “For some of the more populated corridors around South Central and parts of the Interior, it’s more about fuels, wind events, and human activity.”
A typical fire season in Alaska includes about 500 wildfires that burn an estimated 650,000 acres. Every year more than 80 percent of these fires are human-caused and result from careless or negligent use of fire, often in escapes from burn barrels, campfires, burn piles, or other sources.
Alaska has been enjoying significant sunshine in March, and April will probably bring the first early-season human fire starts to low-lying areas of the state as the snowpack retreats. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows no current drought in Alaska, while the Climate Prediction Center calls for a slightly warmer and wetter spring for western and northern Alaska. Fire activity the first week of March in Alaska was non-existent with a thick blanket of snow for most of the state. Additional details are available online at the akfireinfo.com website.
Rocky S. Wood died while fighting a wildfire in Buchanan County in southwest Virginia on March 9, 2023.
Wood, an employee with the Virginia Department of Forestry (VDOF), died at approximately 8:30 p.m. while working on a 15-acre wildfire near the Roseann community along Lester’s Fork Road. Prior to becoming a full-time forestry technician with VDOF in 2016, he had worked as a part-time wildland firefighter with the agency and for the Virginia Department of Corrections. An investigation is underway, according to a statement from VDOF.
“Today our hearts are broken as we send our sincere condolences to Rocky’s family, friends and fellow colleagues during this difficult time,” said State Forester Rob Farrell.
A Facebook post from the Town of Haysi, Virginia, where Wood was vice mayor and chief of the Haysi Volunteer Fire Department, also shared condolences. “We will strive to honor his memory and service,” the post reads, “though it’s hard to find the right words at this time. Please keep his family in your prayers as they navigate their grief.”
VOLUSIA COUNTY, FLORIDA — A large wildfire in Volusia County is putting up a lot of smoke, according to the Florida Highway Patrol, which cautioned drivers to exercise caution. A fire in the Tiger Bay State Forest, according to ClickOrlando.com news, is burning along Interstate 4 north of State Road 44 near DeLand. The Florida Forest Service said the fire had burned about 70 acres and was 60 percent contained.
A Florida Department of Transportation highway camera earlier today showed thick dark smoke from the fire, not far from I-4. State troopers issued a travel advisory because of the smoke for motorists in the area both for I-4 and for International Speedway Boulevard.
A 400-acre fire in Marion County, according to WCJB news, also closed roads. Florida Forest Service firefighters were dispatched to an escaped blaze near Gooski Prairie on Friday afternoon. Sheriff’s deputies said parts of County Road 316, from Northeast 175th Street to Fort McCoy, have been re-opened after a closure resulting from the fire and smoke.
Florida Forest Service officials said the fire was at 75 percent containment by 3:30 p.m. By 7 p.m., though, the winds had picked up and carried the fire from 200 acres to twice that size.
The fire started as a controlled burn ignited by a private landowner on Thursday afternoon.
WINK News reported yesterday that firefighters were working on several brush fires across southwest Florida pushed by high winds, including one in Collier County that the Florida Forest Service reported at 300 acres with about 25 percent containment. The Collier County Sheriff’s Office ordered evacuations, but they were soon lifted. The Greater Naples Fire Chief said three homes were burned and more were threatened.
ClickOrlando.com reported that temperatures are expected to climb into the upper 80s over the weekend before cooling down as a weak cold front moves closer to the region, but chances of rain are estimated at just 20 percent.
