By Kelechukwu Iruoma | Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and 19 other Western governors are prodding Congress to move more urgently to address a wildfire crisis that has grown worse in recent years.
In Arizona last year, 1,837 fires burned 188,483 acres, according to the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management. This year’s total is already worse: 1,704 fires on 252,929 acres, officials said, and the wildfire season isn’t over.
In 2020, 2,447 wildfires burned 980,308 acres of state, federal and tribal lands in Arizona alone – about the size of Rhode Island. Other Western states have been similarly ravaged.
“The wildfire crisis will not abate without congressional support for aggressive intervention,” reads the letter signed by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat who chairs the Western Governors’ Association; and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who serves as vice-chair.
Congress created a Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission in 2021 to recommend improvements to wildfire management. Few of the recommendations the panel issued a year ago have been implemented.
The report called the crisis “immense,” and urged Congress to shift its mindset from fire response to proactive measures, such as “retrofitting structures to resist ignition, thinning vegetation near communities, or managing forests and grasslands.”
“The reactive approach of our current system is not only incredibly costly, but also does little to mitigate overall wildfire risk,” the panel wrote.
The panel also urged Congress to provide dedicated funding to compile and evaluate wildfire hazard data, and suggested federal standards to reduce the risk of sparks from power lines.
