Senator Jon Tester has signed onto a bill that would help communities cope with the aftermath of a major wildfire.
Wildfires sometimes deliver a catastrophic one-two punch. A fire itself is bad enough, but it can also leave behind scorched soil which can’t absorb rainfall. That puts nearby communities at higher risk of floods and landslides.
Senator Jon Tester supports a proposal that would help those communities pay for mitigation projects such as erosion barriers and drainage improvement. It would also fund fuels reduction projects.
Missoula County Commissioner Jean Curtiss:
"This would have helped a lot."
Curtiss is talking about the aftermath of a the Lolo Creek Complex Fire that scorched over 10,000 acres near Missoula in 2013. She says requests for mitigation assistance outstripped the county’s available funding.
"We were able to get some hazard mitigation money to help pay to fight the fire, but then once the fire was over – things like that are always a nice wake-up call to say, 'wow I should probably do a little fuel mitigation to protect my home in the future', but there wasn’t money for that," Curtis says.
Tester’s bill would fix that by releasing federal mitigation funding for wildfires that burn on nonfederal lands. Tester also supports a separate proposal to allow the government to pay for catastrophic fires using separate emergency funding.
The U.S. Forest Service says wildfire costs are now consuming over half the agency’s budget.
