Fire Weather Development Act of 2024

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, in Hawaii, California, Colorado, and Michigan, wildfires are posing an increasing threat to the lives and livelihoods of so many Americans.

Over the last 30 years, the wildfire season in the West alone has lengthened by several months, and the total number of acres burned per year has nearly doubled.

Climate change has contributed to warmer temperatures and drier conditions, causing more frequent and intense wildland fires.

Understanding the fundamental science behind wildfires, including the impacts of climate change, is absolutely essential to our ability to improve the prediction and forecasting of increasingly severe wildfires.

Another essential element to our response to wildfires is the effective communication of information and risks to land managers and to those living in wildfire-vulnerable areas.

To accomplish that, we have H.R. 4866, a phenomenal bipartisan piece of legislation to direct NOAA to establish a program that will increase the accuracy of, and effectively communicate, fire forecasts and warnings.

The brave and tireless work of incident management teams is absolutely the cornerstone of successful wildfire responses. This includes incident meteorologists, or IMETs, who work around the clock at active fire sites for days or weeks at a time, providing lifesaving information about wildfire and environmental conditions to firefighters and managers.

This bill also allows NOAA's National Weather Service to fully compensate IMETs for overtime work during active fire events, which will expand the capacity of IMETs to conduct their essential work.

The bill also requires NOAA to leverage collaborations with State, local, and Tribal governments, Federal agencies, academia, and the private sector to decrease the loss of lives and property from wildfires and support fire response personnel.

I truly commend Congressman Mike Garcia and my colleague from Colorado (Ms. Caraveo) for working on this important legislation that will truly put the United States in a better position to respond to increasing threats of wildfires.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. STEVENS. Caraveo).

Mr. Speaker, we find ourselves at a prominent moment here on the House floor, hopefully seeing the passage of H.R. 4866 to address some of these extraordinary fire considerations that have taken place. I continue to encourage my colleagues to join those of us who do this hard and great work on the Science Committee to pass this bill.

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