[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 67 (Thursday, May 13, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2992-H2993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        FOREST SERVICE UNDERFUNDED TO FIGHT FOREST FIRES IN 2004

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today, the Committee on Resources held a 
hearing on the coming fire season in the West. Officials of the Bush 
administration predicted that arguably, this could be the worst fire 
season in the Nation's history. So far, so good. They are looking out 
for our resources, our communities, our people.
  Unfortunately, they went on to say that because the President shorted 
the budget and the Congress agreed with the President, that there is 
only about half the money in that budget that they expect they are 
going to need to fight the fires this year. Last year, a pretty bad 
fire season, but not the worst in history, the Forest Service ran out 
of money in August. Now, they cannot stop fighting the fires, so what 
do they do? Well, they go out and rob other Forest Service programs 
that are already underfunded. Over the last few years, they have gone 
and canceled fuel reduction contracts; that is, preventing the 
intensity or the possibility or probability of future fires through 
thinning and other activities, they actually would rob that program to 
pay for fighting this year's fires. But they do not learn their lesson.
  Over the last 5 years, the average spent to fight fires by the 
Federal agencies has been $1.2 billion. So what did the President ask 
for and the Republican Congress give him in this year's budget? Mr. 
Speaker, $600 million, one-half of that amount. We are going into the 
worst fire year in history with less than one-half of the 5-year 
average. Even worse, just a few days ago, the Bush administration 
grounded all the tanker planes, because they cannot coordinate between 
the FAA and the BLM and the Forest Service and they cannot work out 
some paperwork on certifying whether or not these planes are safe or 
not. So our first line of defense, the heaviest line of defense we 
have, that which I know has saved the lives of firefighters and has 
saved homes and communities, is grounded.
  Fourteen months ago I anticipated this problem and wrote to the 
Forest Service and they said, oh, do not worry, we have a plan. Their 
plan is a whole bunch of small planes and helicopters and yes, they can 
perform a valuable function, but they cannot get very quickly to 
distant fires, they cannot drop the huge loads that are sometimes 
needed to save a fire crew or stop a fire from breaching a hill and 
going down into a community or engulfing a

[[Page H2993]]

house. We will not have that tool this year, because they did not plan.
  Now they say, well, they are trying to figure out where they might 
borrow the money to fight the fires. Might borrow the money. That means 
going back and decimating already underfunded programs in the Forest 
Service, maybe fuel reduction again, recreation most probably, capital 
investment improvements, all sorts of things that are detrimental to 
the resource and the public lands.
  I have a novel idea. Why do they not instead be honest about how much 
money they need and come to the Congress from the White House with the 
President's support and ask for what they think they will need to fight 
this year's fires? Ask for another $600 million. Yes, it is a lot of 
money, but we cannot ignore this problem. We could better prepare if 
they knew they had the money on hand. Instead of people scrambling 
around the Forest Service looking for other budgets to rob, they could 
be training more initial attack teams.
  We got a report on the Biscuit Fire, a huge fire in southern Oregon a 
couple of years ago, which says there were no initial attack teams 
available. It is reported by some observers from California that the 
big southern branch of that fire was isolated to a couple of trees on 
one ridge on the first day. Now, if we had been able to get an initial 
attack team in there, but again, because of underfunding they were not 
available for days, we might have been able to prevent the whole 
southern branch of that cataclysmic fire.
  So what is going to happen this year? They proudly say, well, they 
get 98 percent of those sorts of things. That is true. But if the 2 
percent of the ones that they do not get, or even the 1 percent, are 
huge destructive fires that destroy resources, that destroy 
communities, that maybe even take lives, then is that not kind of a 
faulty way to save money? They say, well, we do not want all of those 
young people sitting around waiting for the initial attack teams; that 
would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  Well, it cost $200 million to fight that fire. So we could have spent 
a couple of thousand dollars to have young people trained. If there 
really are not any fires going on, let us put them out there and do 
some trail maintenance or something else; they can certainly do that 
work too if that is what we are paying them for. But when the fires are 
already starting to burn, to have them ready to go at a moment's notice 
is crucial and critical and could stop and prevent a huge catastrophic 
loss of resource, loss of life, loss of property.
  That is a good Federal investment. I do not begrudge paying those 
young men and women who are going to risk their lives for a little bit 
of down time when we are going to use them sometimes 3, 4, 5, 6 days 
straight a week or 2 later.
  So I find that this administration is just being so shortsighted. 
They can see the problem: The most catastrophic predicted fire in 
history, they grounded the tanker planes, asked for and got only half 
the money they think they are going to need; we will lack the initial 
attack teams and a whole host of other things we need to do. We are 
going to short the communities for their fire prevention programs, 
their cooperative fire management and other things where we help 
communities fireproof themselves and homeowners with a little bit of 
Federal matching money and assistance.
  What is wrong with this administration? Why will they not ask for the 
money they need to protect our people, our communities, our resources?

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