Unanimous Senate approval granted to New Mexico Senator's bill focused on predicting and managing wildfires
Fire Ready Nation Act: A Step Forward in Wildfire Preparedness and Response
A significant move towards improving wildfire preparedness and response in the United States has been made with the unanimous passage of the Fire Ready Nation Act in the U.S. Senate. The bill, which had bipartisan support, aims to enhance wildfire forecasting, prevention, and fighting capabilities.
The Fire Ready Nation Act establishes a fire weather services program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), authorising wildfire response services. If passed by the House and signed into law, the Act could facilitate research into modern modeling techniques and the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence for fire forecasting at NOAA.
The Act also focuses on improving smoke forecasting to address health effects from wildfires. It codifies the Incident Meteorologist Service into law, which deploys forecasters to assist emergency responders. Furthermore, the bill includes provisions for advanced ocean mapping.
The legislation creates a fire weather test bed for research on new technologies, including the use of drones for fire data collection. This could prove instrumental in understanding and managing wildfires, particularly plume-dominated fires, which are more common in western forests.
The Act's passage comes at a time when the federal government has been spending close to $3 billion a year, on average, from 2019 to 2022, to suppress fires. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, one of the bill's sponsors, has urged the president to sign the Act into law due to its strong bipartisan support and the need to enhance wildfire forecasting, preparedness, and response capabilities.
Sen. Luján emphasised NOAA's role in wildfire forecasting, preparedness, and response, and warned against diverting or underspending NOAA funds. The bill authorises $148 million over the next five years for NOAA to accomplish its expanded fire weather duties.
However, in 2021, no specific politicians or organisations from the United States government are publicly documented as having engaged with the Fire Ready Nation Act according to the available search results. The Fire Ready Nation Act is a U.S. legislative proposal aimed at wildfire preparedness, but details about its supporters in the U.S. federal government that year are not found in the provided sources.
It's worth noting that the bill does not mention any specific provisions related to advertisements. The Fire Ready Nation Act is a significant step towards enhancing wildfire preparedness and response in the United States, and its potential impact could be far-reaching.
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