Wildfire Firefighter Pay

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I just want to say that I am really honored to be here today to talk about wildfires and our firefighters, how noble they are, how much support they need, and how grateful we are to them. That is why we are devoting this hour to the topic of wildfires.

Let me just start by thanking our brave firefighters and first responders for the work they do to keep us safe in all sorts of emergencies.

The last few years in Washington State and, frankly, the whole West of the United States have shown that as climate change accelerates making for hotter days and weakened trees in overcrowded forests, so does the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

All across the West, we are seeing wildfires that have grown in intensity and frequency, and our State has some of the highest risk of what we call firesheds in the entire country.

We have all felt the impact of wildfires through the damage they have caused in our communities, the smoke in the air that we all breathe and choke on every summer, and for some of us, our homes. This is especially true in places like Stehekin and Lake Chelan where the Pioneer fire just burnt for months in my district, threatening an entire community and causing evacuations. I am so grateful to the firefighters on the ground in Lake Chelan who worked tirelessly and put themselves at risk to stop the spread of that devastating fire wherever they could and to protect the residents who needed to be evacuated.

Because wildfires are an ever-increasing threat, I worked in Congress with Members of both parties to address this issue. I will talk about a couple of examples.

In Congress I am proud to have recently introduced the National Prescribed Fire Act. I introduced this bipartisan, bicameral bill along with Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon and David Valadao from California. This legislation would invest in hazardous fuels management, including prescribed fire, which is an effective, underutilized method of forest management that helps to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and choking on smoke in the summer.

More specifically, this bill would authorize $300 million in total for the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to plan, prepare, and conduct prescribed burns on Federal, State, and private lands.

It would require the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to increase the number of acres treated each year with prescribed fire.

It would establish a $10 million collaborative program based on the successful collaborative forest landscape restoration program to implement prescribed burns on county, State, and private land at high risk of burning in a wildfire.

This bill would also establish a workforce development program at the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to develop, train, and hire prescribed fire practitioners, because not all firefighters do this. It would establish employment programs for Tribes, for veterans, for women, and for those formerly incarcerated.

It would also require State air quality agencies to use current and often more relaxed, as in our State of Washington, Federal laws and regulations to allow larger prescribed burns and give States a bit more flexibility in the winter months when there is low risk of catastrophic fire to conduct these prescribed burns that reduce the risk of choking on smoke all summer.

It would also prescribe direction for setting clear standards for prescribed fire practitioner liability and studying the merits of a claims fund to aid with cross-jurisdictional wildfire efforts.

I have also worked on some other legislation that goes hand in hand with this.

One is the Forest Data Modernization Act.

This bill simply lets us know data about our forests and which ones are at the highest risk for catastrophic fire. I have also voted for landmark legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law which incorporated many elements of the previously discussed National Prescribed Fire Act, like historic investments to remove underbrush and use prescribed fire to reduce these risks of catastrophic wildfire.

As an achievement in my own district, just last year the Kittitas County Conservation District received $10 million through these infrastructure funds.

Investments like this in firesheds like those in my district make tangible differences and allow communities throughout the Eighth District to be better prepared for wildfires.

However, I have to say that even with these steps, wildfires are a reality now and in the future that we are going to have to grapple with. I also want to note that in addition to doing prevention, we have a shortage of these first responders, both career and volunteer firefighters, right now. They are our heroes, and we need to take care of them the way that they take care of us.

That is why I voted for several bills to increase firefighter pay and benefits to make firefighting a year-round job and to get grants to local fire departments so that they can hire and retain new firefighters.

Wildfires aren't just an issue east of the Cascades in Washington State anymore, a notoriously wet State west of the Cascades, we are seeing these fires in the wet part of our State, including in Olympic National Forest which is a rain forest.

So I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to push forward meaningful legislation that will keep the Eighth District and the entire Western United States safe.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Carbajal). He is from one of our Western States. Santa Barbara has suffered some dramatic wildfires, as well.

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury) to speak about the Southwest of our country where they also have suffered devastating fires.

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I am so glad that my colleague, Representative Stansbury, mentioned the aftereffects of these wildfires. We all think about smoke and about forests, but we don't think about what happens when the rain comes and the mudslides that follow that cause so much destruction, as well.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Stanton).

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres), another Western State. We have a theme here.

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. I am so sorry to hear that she lost her own home in a wildfire, and I thank her for pointing out firewise and things that people can do to at least mitigate their own risk, although these fires are out of control.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Nevada (Ms. Titus), another State with record hot temperatures.

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for sharing her experiences, and I hope those fires are extinguished soon.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), one of my colleagues who has been an incredible partner when it comes to managing our forests, protecting them from catastrophic wildfire, to really thinking forward about how we use prescribed fire. I believe that is because Colorado and Washington State face very similar risks.

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Ms. SCHRIER. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Neguse. I cannot overstate what an excellent partner the gentleman has been to work with and to fight for managing our forests and for our firefighters.

Madam Speaker, we feel that appreciation for our first responders in our hearts, but that is just not enough. We need to find that in our appropriations as well. As my colleague, Mr. Neguse, just pointed out, the pay isn't high enough. These are high-risk jobs.

We have turned them into year-round jobs for forest management. That is helpful. We have gotten pensions and Federal benefits. That is helpful. Yet think about what they do. Think about what their families go through. Think about housing. How are they supposed to find housing when they don't know where the next fire is going to be and when they don't have a salary to support themselves.

There is a way to combine all of these efforts of higher pay, more recognition, and better benefits. Frankly, we should have a path to allow firefighters to buy into Medicare early, and I have cosponsored this. We can't expect people to fight fires until they are 65 years old. It just doesn't make sense. Just like we did for veterans, we also need to have some presumption that illnesses later in life likely came from inhalation of smoke.

I also mention that there is a real need to sort of complete the cycle. It is one thing to pull underbrush out, to bring small-diameter trees out of our forests in order to protect the forests, but then there are all kinds of uses for those. We need more small-diameter mills. We need guarantees from the Forest Service that those small- diameter, 8 inches or less, trees will go and be processed.

We can create cross-laminated timber that is strong enough that we could build housing and build it more affordably with materials grown right here at home. There is a cycle there.

We can use it for biochar. All of these Western States, they are dry, too. Biochar will hold moisture in the ground and can help complete this cycle. I have a business in my district that creates something called wood straw. It works better than regular hay or straw in stabilizing a hillside because it kind of sticks into that mud and allows seeds to germinate more quickly. We can use these products and complete that cycle and make it pencil out financially.

I also give a nod to a community in my district, the community of Roslyn. Roslyn, a small town, absolutely adorable, sits surrounded by forest. It is one road in, one road out. That is it.

This community is really just waiting for a disaster to happen, but they didn't just sit back and wait. They put in for community project funding and got a good chunk of Federal dollars so that they could manage the forests surrounding their town. That means that there could be a catastrophic wildfire, but it would slow or, hopefully, stop by the time it got near the town.

The community got so involved and excited about this, the forest management, that they each took it upon themselves to firewise their homes, and this has become part of the culture, and it is what we need to do throughout the West to protect our forests and to protect our communities.

I don't believe I have any speakers left, and so I just emphasize that gratitude to our firefighters and my commitment to continuing to work for healthier forests, for the wood products industry, for good environmental stewardship, and for protecting the West and the entire planet from escalating and accelerating climate change.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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