United States Fire Administration Reauthorization Act of 2008

Floor Speech

United States Fire Administration Reauthorization Act of 2008

Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support today of H.R. 4847, which is the United States Fire Administration Reauthorization Act.

This reauthorization of this vital legislation demonstrates Congress' commitment to enhance the protection of our citizens throughout this great Nation to prevent any harm that might come to loss of life or property due to devastation caused by fires. Included in this legislation is an amendment that I offered at a full committee markup that I'd like to reiterate and clarify at this time.

Inclusive in H.R. 4847 is an amendment that does not create a new stand-alone course regarding port and marine firefighting. In fact, much effort was taken by my staff, the Republican side, committee staff, as well as the various agencies, to ensure that we would take conscious action in not creating additional costs for the agencies and/or programs that are right now really not funded to the levels we would like to see.

The intent of the amendment is to take the unique content of port and marine firefighting activity and to incorporate that information into existing classes. Why, you might ask? This Congress' goal of using, in an efficient manner, resources that we have, we also want to integrate information to best prepare our firefighters to respond to disasters.

And you might ask the question, why? In the United States alone, we have over 126 shipping ports, all of which are critical to the movement of goods and the general health of our economy. The volatility of the products that are being shipped and the new increased size of these shipping vessels causes problems to our firefighters in terms of responding. So, when you consider a district such as mine that borders along the Port of Long Beach and also the Port of Los Angeles, one of the things that we learned in the wake of Katrina, we learned in the San Diego fires, and we also learned with September 11th is that firefighters are brothers and sisters. You might have rural firefighters who respond to an urban disaster; likewise, urban firefighters might be called to respond to a rural disaster.

And so, one of the things that we've learned in these incredible complex disasters that we've had over the last couple of years is that inoperability, the ability for rural and urban firefighters to have the same information and to be prepared in the midst of a disaster because it's one thing to play Monday night quarterback when everything can be planned in advance, but when we have a disaster, it is too late at that point for our firefighters to be trained on how do you respond to an extended vessel, or how do you respond to an LNG disaster, or how do you respond to anything else that might be occurring. And so, with that, it is my pleasure to work with, we had great leadership by Mr. Mitchell here in this effort of the reauthorization bill.

Because we never know what our firefighters might be facing, I, unfortunately, lost a firefighter in California just last week. So, I would be remiss at this moment not to thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, Representative Bartlett and Representative Rohrabacher, for their support of this amendment.

I intend, through conference with staff and the appropriate members of the Department of Homeland Security, USFA, and the Superintendent of the Fire Academy to ensure that we have the right curriculum that can be incorporated that can benefit all firefighters to ultimately protect our citizens in a better way.

In closing, I want to again commend our colleague, Representative Mitchell, for his leadership on this issue, and also Chairman Gordon for his commitment on the Science and Technology Committee to move beyond all of the limits and the challenges that we have, and to make sure that Americans are protected every day.

I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.

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