Apologies for Cross Posting 

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Brenna Bell <brenna@bark-out.org>
Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 5:08 PM
Subject: Please sign on federal letter about fire legislation
To: pnw-forest-climate-alliance@googlegroups.com <pnw-forest-climate-alliance@googlegroups.com>

Hi all,

A small team from this Alliance crafted a sign-on letter to Senators regarding the four different federal bills that all purport to address public safety and fires.  I've included the text of the letter below, and it's also on this google form, where we invite you and your organization to sign on by Oct. 9th: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeqctsib29BgFU5EcPvqe6uqK185-WGGjCMOdFK_43i1PP7sA/viewform

Sign-On Letter: Support Federal Wildfire Policy that Centers Effective Strategies to Improve Community Safety docs.google.com

Please share with other groups in your areas that were affected by fires - all are welcome to sign on, it is not limited to environmental folks.  Focus on Washington, Oregon and California groups, but national are also welcome to sign on.

take care y'all,

Brenna

To the West Coast delegation:

Grief lies heavy as smoke on the west coast of the United States. In a short span of time, hundreds of lives have been lost, thousands of homes have burned and entire communities have vanished from the landscape. The unprecedented toll on California, Oregon and Washington State from intense, climate-driven fires leaves people at all levels of government, from town councils to the U.S. Senate, in shock and sorrow asking: where do we go from here?

This question may have many answers, but one thing is clear: this is a humanitarian crisis and must be addressed as such. The government response must focus on supporting community resiliency first and foremost rather than squander time and resources logging land miles away from homes. Effective wildfire preparedness includes making homes more fire resistant, creating defensible space around structures, and creating smoke shelters and other resources that support our most vulnerable community members in wildfire seasons to come.

To this end, we encourage you to support S. 2882, the Wildfire Defense Act, which has a common sense, community-centered approach to increasing resilience in preparation for future fires. The Wildfire Defense Act was developed with and for communities whose lives have been severely disrupted by fire. It contains effective solutions to known problems and, if implemented, would ensure that communities are better prepared to meet the fires of the future.

Specifically, the Wildfire Defense Act will invest $1 billion annually for a variety of community resiliency measures, including establishing guidelines for new Community Wildfire Defense Plans (CWDP) developed in coordination with community members, first responders, and relevant state agencies.
CWDPs will focus on implementing strategies and activities relating to:
-Improving evacuations and access for first responders
-Addressing vulnerable populations, including the elderly, those with disabilities, and the homeless
-Hardening critical infrastructure and homes
-Applying defensible space projects to create a buffer between communities and the forest
-Building local capacity to implement and oversee the plan
-Deploying distributed energy resources like microgrids with battery storage
-Coordinating with existing wildfire plans like a Community Wildfire Protection Plan

The Wildfire Defense Act would provide grants of up to $250,000 to develop a CWDP and grants of up to $10 million to implement a CWDP, prioritizing low-income communities that are in a wildfire hazard area and communities recently impacted by a major wildfire. The Wildfire Defense Act would also ensure better coordination between all federal authorities and programs to protect communities from wildfires and improve emergency radio communications across departments and agencies.

In direct contrast to the common sense, community-focused Wildfire Defense Act, S.4431, the ill-named Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act of 2020, promotes logging national forests many miles from communities while undermining environmental laws and fails to do anything effective to promote public safety.

The Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act focuses on logging and fuel breaks as the primary method of managing wildland fire. While reducing fuels can be effective in changing fire behavior under moderate weather conditions, it has no impact on large fires driven by extreme weather events. Nor do fuels reduction and fire breaks in national forests have any impact on fires that start in and around towns and communities, such as several this year started by powerlines.

As written, the provisions of the Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act would have done nothing to mitigate the devastating impact of this year’s most destructive blazes, as many fires did not burn in forests. They burned in grasslands, in chaparral and through towns, passing from house to house. Fire is a natural part of ecosystems and the land will recover, but houses do not regrow. In many places, the most impacted were those who are already the most vulnerable and, again, directing resources to increasing logging does nothing to help these damaged communities, now or in the future.

The Emergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act would also lift the export ban on unprocessed timber from western federal lands. Not only does this provision have nothing to do with fire management and public safety, allowing the export of raw logs could result in the loss of hundreds of jobs in local lumber mills. Simply put, S.4431 reads more like a give away to the timber industry than a good faith approach to increasing public safety and community resiliency to fire. It would be disrespectful to all those who have suffered losses from these fires for the government’s response to be wholly disconnected from actual fire safety issues, and wholly unable to provide actual solutions.

Two other federal bills include some provisions that could complement the Wildfire Defense Act and help restore ecosystems in the West:
-S.4625, the National Prescribed Fire Act, would provide $300 million to federal agencies to do controlled burns on federal, state, and private lands. We strongly support controlled, cultural fire use with Indigenous people and Tribal government on their ancestral lands, but believe that the bill should ensure that prescribed fire is only carried out in appropriate landscapes
-S. 3684, the 21st Century CCC bill, could help fund landscape restoration projects, including those that make the forest more resilient to wildland fire, as well as supporting a jobs program that could improve recreation infrastructure on federal lands.

While there are aspects of these bills we support, we want to underscore that the congressional response needs to first and foremost focus on home defense and community preparedness--not more logging in forests in the backcountry. Bills that create jobs and restore the landscape may complement this work but should not be the sole nor immediate focus of governmental time and resources. Our communities need real solutions now.

It is time for effective measures that address the humanitarian crisis created when fire rips through a town. It is time to support better planning and better emergency responses. It is time to appropriate funding for hardening homes and creating defensible space, for ensuring that our most vulnerable populations can breathe.

2020 is a year of reckoning. With the interrelated crises of the coronavirus pandemic, systemic racism and climate change, we are reckoning with years of government denial, inaction and policies that exacerbated the adverse impacts of all these crises. Moving forward, we cannot rely on approaches that seldom worked in the past and that we have no assurance will work in the changing climate.

This issue hits home for many of us – we are evacuees, our families and friends have lost homes, our offices have burned down. We want to talk with you about the impact of these fires on communities throughout the West Coast and connect you to those at the frontlines of this struggle. These won’t be the last fires in the West, but with your leadership, we can prepare and adapt to ensure that all communities are more resilient when the next ones come. We look forward to working with you in the work ahead.

brenna bell | staff attorney/NEPA coordinator
bark | www.bark-out.org |
mailing | po box 12065, portland, or 97212
learn to protect mt hood national forest today

I am parenting/homeschooling part of the day so am slower than usual in responding to most email.  Please know I appreciate your patience as I get back to you.

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MarieClaire Egbert 

Social Media Coordinator & Forest Policy Advocate

John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute 

(484) 554-6566