OLYMPIA, Wash. — As Washington state's wildfire season gets underway, lawmakers in Olympia are close to passing legislation that would help give firefighters the necessary tools for battling wildfires.
House Bill 1168 is aimed at reducing the threat of wildfires across the state of Washington by creating a dedicated fund that would provide $125 million every two years to boost wildfire response, accelerate forest restoration and support community resilience.
Fire departments across Washington are working with limited personnel and resources. Representative Larry Springer, who introduced the bill, said that money would be used to hire more firefighters and buy much-needed resources.
"We need better equipment. We are currently fighting fires with two helicopters that flew in the Vietnam War so it’s time to upgrade equipment," Springer said.
Springer said mitigating the fire risk is vital, especially for communities most at risk. He said the most important piece of the bill is improving the health of Washington’s forest, which includes, “getting crews into the forest, removing dead and dying trees, clearing underbrush, doing controlled burns; all of that to improve the health and ability of a forest to withstand wildfire.”
“We have to take proactive measures to combat wildfire and the health effects that come as a result of that,” said Springer, who represents Washington’s 45th District. He said the threat of wildfires in Washington is exponentially growing. “In the 1990s, we burned about an average of 86,000 acres a year. In the 2000s, we burned 189,000 acres per year. Last year, we burned 812,000 acres in one year.”
Last year's wildfires rivaled the historic 2015 wildfire season that had more than one million acres burn and cost the state more than $342 million, according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
On Monday, April 19, the Department of Natural Resources reported crews responded to 91 wildfires in one week.
“Our fire seasons have been starting sooner and been going longer,” said Hilary Franz, Washington’s Commissioner for Public Lands.
Franz' department oversees the fire crews tasked with battling wildfires across Washington.
“But we have not been investing in the firefighters, the equipment, and the air resources at the local level and the state level to be able to set our state up for success to respond to these fires.”
According to the DNR, the state’s trajectory for wildfire severity has worsened in recent years, climbing from 293,000 acres burned in 2016 to 438,000 in 2018 to over 812,000 acres burned in 2020.
For two of the past three years, Washington has experienced the worst air quality in the world due to wildfires.