Editorial: Time for Congress to recognize wildfires as natural disasters

The rains have finally come, but many wildfires are still expected to burn into October.

About 9 million acres have been torched across the country this summer, mostly in the West. It’s been a record fire year in Washington, with the North Star and Tunk Block fires near Omak burning 370,000 acres, much of it on the Colville Indian Reservation. About 3,000 households are under evacuation notices. Three firefighters have died; untold wildlife and livestock have perished.

The charred landscape and dangerous smoke send a clear signal: This is a natural disaster that demands an emergency response.

But government isn’t set up to treat it that way.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell acknowledged this shortcoming while visiting the fire camp in Omak, and she called for much-needed reform. She noted that fires of the magnitude seen in north-central Washington this summer were major events, but government does not “have the capacity to treat it as the disaster it truly is.”

While the Obama administration and Western lawmakers are calling for such fires to be eligible for the same type of response as hurricanes and tornadoes, Jewell says it can be difficult to persuade members of Congress who live in areas where wildfires aren’t an issue.

“People in the east just don’t get it,” she said.

That’s an awfully sad reflection on politicians who can’t see or smell the smoke. Westerners don’t have any problem imagining the horrors of hurricanes and tornadoes, though we rarely experience them. We don’t begrudge the emergency aid that’s rushed to the Gulf Coast, Eastern Seaboard or Tornado Alley in the Midwest.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency should also be able to respond to wildfires in a speedy, nimble way.

Currently, federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service must rob other areas of their budgets to respond to disasters. So money set aside to prevent fires goes to fighting them, which increases the odds of a bad fire season the following year. The Forest Service spent 16 percent of its budget on firefighting 20 years ago; last year it was 42 percent. The conditions have changed, and Congress should allow agencies to adapt accordingly. Robbing prevention budgets to fight current fires is a losing strategy.

Western forests need to be managed better, but that can’t happen without more resources. Thick stands of trees should be thinned. Dead and diseased wood should be cleared. More people need to be trained to fight fires. Crews were stretched so thin this year, the state Department of Natural Resources started taking volunteers. As Jewell noted, only 50 firefighters were on hand for the initial attack on the North Star fire.

Last year, Western lawmakers rang the alarm bell to no avail. It would be unconscionable for Congress to ignore these true natural disasters again.