Fix Our Forests Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. OBERNOLTE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity to present my amendment to the Fix Our Forests Act.

Mr. Chair, I represent a very mountainous region of California, and every year we have wildfires burn in my region.

The problem is particularly acute this year. We have two major wildfires that are still burning in my district, the Bridge fire and the Line fire. Mr. Chair, together, these fires have consumed nearly 100,000 acres.

Thankfully, relatively few structures have been affected this year, but Mr. Chair, I was convinced 2 weeks ago that we were going to lose over 1,000 homes in my district.

This problem is particularly acute because the fires spread so quickly. Unfortunately, the Line fire that caused the evacuation of parts of my hometown in California was started by arson, and that arsonist started three different fires that day.

Two of them, Mr. Chair, firefighters were able to jump on quickly and extinguish. It is the third one that spread quickly enough that it became the conflagration that threatened many communities in my district.

This amendment prioritizes emerging technology, such as early- detection technology and the artificial intelligence techniques required to process it in the pilot program that this bill establishes.

Mr. Chair, there is a lot of promise in early-detection technologies. Conventional satellite detection relies on satellites and geostationary orbits that are far away from the Earth, and therefore, have very poor spatial resolution. Those satellites can only detect a fire when it is already quite large.

Mr. Chair, new low-Earth orbit satellites with thermal detection technology have much better spatial resolution, and they can detect a forest fire when it just begins.

Moreover, these new technologies can be transmitted to the Earth in minutes instead of hours. If you combine that with the artificial intelligence processing technology that looks at these images and can distinguish between a campfire and a tree that is hit by lightning that is the potential source of a forest fire, that is a game-changing development in wildfire technology.

Combine that with fast, aerial, firefighting platforms, and we will be able to put out fires before they get started and avoid some of the catastrophes that have afflicted my district in recent years.

I think this is a commonsense amendment. I am thankful it is bipartisan. I thank my bipartisan sponsor, Congresswoman Pettersen from Colorado, who shares my concern about this, and I urge adoption of my amendment.

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Mr. OBERNOLTE. Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman), the chair of the Natural Resources Committee and my friend.

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Mr. OBERNOLTE. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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