[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 158 (Monday, September 14, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5565-S5568]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Wildfires

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, because of raging fires in my home State of 
Oregon, many communities in my home State have been reduced to ashes. A 
number of others are experiencing what is known as the ice box effect, 
where, in effect, smoke blocks out the Sun, and it gets quite cool. 
Virtually all of Oregon is now choking on smoke--that is whether you 
are inside or outside at this point. Countless thousands of Oregonians 
are under evacuation orders. Many are quite literally fleeing for their 
lives and abandoning their homes as the flames approach.
  When I was home this weekend, I initially thought that a number of my 
communities had been hit by a wrecking ball. That really understates 
the situation because usually when you get hit by a wrecking ball, 
there is a little bit left that is not just ashes. Now thousands of 
people in my State have lost their homes. They have lost their 
businesses. They have lost lifelong memories.
  I brought a flag to a family who lost in one of the fires the service 
flag of a loved one that they had cherished, and it just struck me that 
it is those kinds of memories, and losing them, that are as painful in 
many instances as losing houses and businesses.
  The death toll has been rising. Others are still missing and 
unaccounted for.
  Amid all the panic and loss, one of the aspects that left me, as I 
came back to Washington, with a bit of hope is that we lost so much, 
but we didn't lose our spirit. We didn't lose what we call the Oregon 
Way--neighbor helping neighbor, volunteers helping evacuees get food 
and water and shelter. Everybody steps up when a crisis arrives; nobody 
cares a whit about anybody's politics.
  I have come to the floor today with a specific purpose, and that is 
to ask the

[[Page S5566]]

Senate to match the same standard I saw of volunteers, neighbors, and 
Oregonians helping Oregonians this weekend, to show the same kind of 
can-do spirit.
  The Presiding Officer of the Senate is new to this body. He has a 
State with a lot of rural terrain. I am going to be asking him and 
every Member of the Senate, all 100 of us, to say: Let's make today the 
day when the Senate chose to finally get serious about fire that has 
harmed so many these last few weeks. Let's make this the day when the 
Senate chose to take a dilapidated and out-of-date fire policy and 
replace it with a modern strategy for the real, on-the-ground 
conditions that have caused fires to magnify the pain that is being 
felt by millions today.
  The reason I am making this request of the Senate--that the Senate 
replace the way forest policy has been made in the past--is that those 
past processes--and, as my colleague already knows since he has been 
here now, the Senate moves often with glacially slow Senate processes, 
and those processes are now being totally overwhelmed by the massive 
infernos that are blanketing our communities and blanketing the West 
with smoke that is literally up to our eyeballs. The Presiding Officer 
in the Senate is a tall fellow. I am 6 feet 4 inches. That is what I 
felt this weekend. I and everybody else had smoke up to our eyeballs.
  The process the Senate has for dealing with these new kinds of forest 
calamities--and there is no other way to describe it--those old 
procedures lack the urgency, lack the speed, lack, frankly, the 
resolute discipline for the incredibly big job that needs to be done 
and done quickly.
  So today I want to begin by offering three policies that I believe 
could be supported by every Senator, Democrats and Republicans. The 
first is that Congress should pass a 21st Century Civilian Conservation 
Corps Act. I have actually seen press in Missouri calling for this kind 
of approach, where young people are involved, securing jobs where they 
pay a living wage, and they can go in and shore up these communities 
threatened by fire.
  I want to emphasize that, having served on the Energy Committee now 
for several years, having authored the two major bills in the forestry 
area--the bill with Senator Crapo--so we no longer waste so much money 
not budgeting for fire, brought about the end of fire borrowing so the 
big fires get taken care of in the disaster fund--don't shortchange 
prevention--and then secure rural schools, which I think is also a 
policy that benefits people all over the country in rural forested 
areas.
  I will just offer the first. All over America, there are millions of 
acres of overstocked timber stands. They are hazardous fuels. It is 
urgent that we go in there, and we can use these hard-working young 
people to clean out those overstocked stands and reduce the risk of 
fire. Fire is inevitable. I know of no bill--none--that can abolish 
fire. The question is, Can we take concrete steps to reduce the 
suffering and the damage of these big fires?

  (Ms. ERNST assumed the Chair.)
  I just gave one example of what the 21st Century Civilian 
Conservation Corps could do. In my home State, there are more than 2 
million acres backlogged in terms of these hazardous fuels that need to 
be reduced. You could have the 21st Century Civilian Conservation 
Corps--thousands of young people--going into every State and taking 
action to reduce these risks. There are a lot of other things that 
could be done by the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps.
  I learned this weekend that we are going to need to deploy new cell 
phone connectivity because a lot of people have lost those connections. 
In fact, one of the challenges in trying to determine how many people 
we have lost is that we believe when the fires first hit, a lot of 
people went to a friend's house and then the friend is not able to 
communicate because they lost cell phone connectivity.
  This is about having young people work on communications, having them 
clean out hazardous fuels, and having them work on stabilizing soils to 
prevent massive flooding, because, make no mistake about it, all over 
the West--in Oregon, Washington, and California--we are going to need 
those soil stabilization projects to prevent massive flooding this 
spring. As sure as the night follows the day, it will be a problem.
  Using the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps, we can deploy 
folks into the forest and into our wildland-urban areas, where there is 
a connection--an interface--because we have a lot of fires in those 
areas, and the Civilian Conservation Corps can reduce hazardous fuels, 
prevent catastrophic fires, and they can do it on a grand scale.
  An ideal part of it and one of the reasons I think this will appeal 
to Democrats and Republicans is there doesn't have to be a fight over 
carrying out our nation's environmental laws. As I mentioned, in Oregon 
alone, there was already a backlog of more than 2 million acres that 
need to be treated. Without those treatments, a lightning strike or a 
carelessly dropped match can start yet another inferno. Just picture 
that. After everything that we had over the last few days, you have all 
of these hazardous fuels built up and you have a lightning strike or a 
carelessly dropped match and, all of a sudden, you have ripped through 
thousands of other acres in the blink of an eye.
  Oregon's forests and the forests of the West badly need this care and 
investment. It would really be an updated version of one of the most 
popular programs the government has ever pursued, that came out of the 
New Deal, and it would be a huge economic boost to rural communities--I 
see the Presiding Officer from the State of Iowa--rural communities 
that feel like government has left them behind.
  That is my first proposal--the first of three--that I believe can 
help us come together as a Senate to reduce the devastating toll of 
these fires that are not your grandfather's fires. They are bigger and 
they are hotter and they are more powerful. We can do it together.
  The second area that I want to see the Senate focus on is addressing 
that the fires mean a lot more than spending all your money on just 
putting big fires out. Forest science has shown that wildfires are a 
part of the natural life cycle of certain parts of the Nation. If all 
you do is focus on putting out fires all the time, you disrupt the 
cycle and that can lead to bigger fires down the road.
  But America no longer gets just manageable natural fires. Instead, we 
get these huge infernos like the ones we have in Oregon, fires that are 
hot enough to melt a car and sterilize the soil. I ask the Presiding 
Officer to imagine how hot it has to be to melt a car.
  There is a need for another tool to help reduce the devastating 
effect of these great fires. It is supported by scientists who have 
been looking at the various tools for dealing with these horrors--
Democrats, Republicans--and it basically involves a prescribed fire 
that can be done safely in the off-seasons, say, in the winter months.
  During those months, there is less risk of spread. You can limit the 
smoke. Civilian Conservation Corps workers working with the scientists 
at the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Oregon 
Department of Forestry, collaboratives, and our counties can carefully 
target these prescribed fires during the off-season and help prevent 
catastrophic fires in the summer and the fall by using the concept to 
clean out the dead and dying undergrowth.
  Here is the essence of my second proposition. If you use prescribed 
fire to burn a little when it is safe in th off-season, you can save a 
whole lot later on by preventing catastrophe during those hotter months 
of summer and fall.

  I have a bill that I have been developing with the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee. I would say to my colleagues that this approach, 
like the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps, will be ready for 
cosponsors later this week. I am going to be going to all of my 
colleagues to ask for support for this second commonsense approach to 
catastrophe avoidance.
  The third proposal brings it all together. Congress must finally kick 
its aversion to making long-term budget investments in treatment and 
fire prevention. Managing our forests requires an investment that we 
essentially look to beyond the next 36 hours. Managing our forests for 
wildfire resilience needs

[[Page S5567]]

to be approached as a longer term proposition, one that can make our 
communities safer while generating jobs--timber for mills, improving 
recreation opportunities. And yet this has been an investment the 
Senate has been unwilling to spend.
  Clearly, not enough has been done to deal with fire prevention. The 
fact that the Congress has constantly been shorting fire prevention is 
contributing to what is being seen in Oregon and throughout the West 
right now. Shorting fire prevention is the wrong way to go, and this 
item, No. 3, is literally a matter of life and death.
  Somehow, this Senate can produce hundreds of billions of dollars for 
tax breaks for special interests. There are outrageous, indefensible 
subsidies for fossil fuels that compound the climate crisis.
  Senator Crapo and I--my colleague who sits just a few feet away, the 
Republican of Idaho--worked for years in a bipartisan way to end what 
is called ``fire borrowing.'' This is actually the first year when our 
bill has gone into effect. It got to the point where we needed over 300 
citizens' groups to pass this bill because so often the big fires were 
fought with prevention money--money borrowed from the prevention 
accounts, and then the fire just got worst.
  Senator Crapo and I said that is foolish, even by Washington, DC, 
standards. We were able to get a special fund created where the big 
fires would be fought from the disaster fund. But still, even with the 
beginning that Senator Crapo and I have made on a bipartisan basis, the 
budget for fire preparedness and prevention is still so woefully short. 
More has to be done to limit the damage from staggeringly powerful 
forest fires, and one of the best ways to do it is to start building up 
that prevention fund that Senator Crapo and I started here in the U.S. 
Senate.
  We laid the foundation, but it is clearly not enough. I checked, 
actually, a couple of days ago. There are $3 billion now in the fund 
for fire suppression. We are sure going to need that because we have 
scores of fires still burning in Oregon, but we are going to need to 
build up preventive funds. And still, prevention as of today, September 
of 2020, is woefully underfunded.
  The Forest Service has the technical tools it needs to improve forest 
health and to reduce the risk of fire, but, as I mentioned, there is a 
2 million-acre backlog just in Oregon. Multiply that all over the West 
or all over the country where there are forests that are under the 
jurisdiction of the Federal Government and it is pretty clear that 
America has to decide it is urgent business to build up the budget for 
fire prevention.
  By allowing the fire prevention backlog I have described to build, 
Congress is just racking up more debt--dangerous debt--and the 
devastation and the smoke in Oregon and across the West today is the 
debt coming due.
  For those of us in the West who fear it is going to be impossible to 
pay the enormous bill that we have been handed through a combination of 
lousy forestry science and a disinterest in real policies that reduce 
climate change, we know the job is going to be hard, but we can and 
must do it by coming together like I saw Oregonians do just this last 
weekend.
  Before I wrap up, I want to mention that there sure have been some 
misguided priorities on all sides of the political spectrum. On one 
side, some of the timber industry skipped past active management to 
pursue the golden calf of eliminating environmental laws. On the other 
side, misguided nonmanagement priorities beat back every attempt to 
manage our forests based on science. Now add to that the ridiculous new 
lies and delusions you are seeing online about the causes of these 
fires, and you have a recipe for distraction as to how the Senate must 
move forward.

  Just today, while visiting California, the President was asked about 
climate change and fires. He said: No problem. The President said, 
``It'll start getting cooler,'' and then he blamed ``explosive trees.'' 
Sending that kind of nonsense across the land is cold comfort to the 
families who are mourning the loved ones they have lost in the fires or 
the thousands of Oregonians who barely made it out before their homes 
and businesses went up in flames.
  The Senate has an obligation to act because around this country--and 
it is not just in my State but across the West--big-hearted neighbors, 
animal lovers, county employees, city administrators, local U-Haul 
businesses, teachers, nurses, and retirees--all of them--are stepping 
up and pitching in. They are bringing food and clothes and towels, and 
they are helping with mental health services.
  Before I wrap up, I particularly want to thank the incredible 
firefighters who are working on hardly any sleep, and I thank the first 
responders, the police and others who are doing so much. One issue they 
are helping with is cell phones and service. My staff and others in the 
delegation have been working with these folks.
  I see my friend from Virginia, who knows a lot about what it takes to 
maintain communications networks, and that is what we are working on 
this afternoon.
  One problem that has come up is networks and equipment burn. There is 
a major strain on the resources for the people on the frontlines who 
are fighting the inferno--for example, with the repeaters that can 
amplify a signal and keep our firefighters connected. I am hearing that 
this country doesn't have enough repeaters in stock to begin to address 
such a crisis that the West is experiencing. It is another example of 
what happens when, year after year, you ignore the urgent need for 
serious fire prevention.
  Before I left Oregon, I told some friends that I was going to come 
back and try to bring the Senate together around fire prevention.
  One said: Well, you are going to be Mr. Fire Prevention.
  I said: No, that is not how it works. I would like to make this the 
Senate that is known for fire prevention and the Senate that said, 
between there and here, there are 100 U.S. Senators, and we have 
differences of opinion. Lord knows that this is the case. But I offered 
concrete proposals, 21st Century Conservation Corps-prescribed changes 
in the budget that Democrats and Republicans can come together on. The 
reason I say that is that we have already done it. That is how Senator 
Crapo and I ended fire borrowing.
  I close with this: What I saw this weekend was heartbreaking--
thousands of families mourning unthinkable loss, trying to figure out 
how to move forward when their homes and their possessions had been 
reduced to ash. Yet, when you talk to them, they will tell you that 
they also know that the problem is not going to get better all by 
itself--I know there are Senators who want to debate this--and that is 
because the climate crisis is here, right now, today.
  It is no longer a far-off hypothetical danger for Senators to debate 
in comfortably air-conditioned buildings. The American West--my State--
is on fire. Whole neighborhoods and whole communities are being reduced 
to ashes. Our air quality has had the dubious recognition over the last 
couple of days of being some of the worst in the world. The climate 
crisis is happening now to us and to our kids. America and the Senate 
ignore it at our peril.
  I brought today three concrete proposals that I think make a serious 
contribution to reducing the pain and suffering that have been seen 
across Oregon and across the West over the last couple of days. I want 
this to be the day the Senate gets serious about fire prevention as 
part of a comprehensive effort to fight the climate crisis.
  The ideas I have outlined--the three major proposals--ought to become 
law soon, and they ought to have bipartisan support. They are policies 
that will protect our communities and the families who live in them and 
that will protect jobs, protect homes, and protect businesses. They 
sure are a lot cheaper because they will prevent fires rather than 
force a bigger pricetag when we need to rebuild communities out of the 
ashes.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia
  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I have come to the floor to talk about a 
different subject, but I want to commend my good friend, the Senator 
from Oregon, for his comments. We all watched with horror this weekend 
the images from his State and from those in Washington and California 
that were literally like something out of Dante's ``Inferno.''
  I have enormous respect for the Senator from Oregon, and he can count 
on

[[Page S5568]]

me to be behind him on these proposals. I know they will be reasonable, 
and I know they will be straightforward. Boy oh boy. If, when we see 
those images, we are not able to step up with a commonsense, 
bipartisan, and quick response, then shame on all of us. I commend the 
Senator for his leadership, and I look forward to working with him.