00:00point. Does any member wish to be recognized for purpose of debate on the bill? Mr. McClintock,
00:06you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On July 4th of 2021, lightning struck a tree in the
00:15Humboldt-Tiobe National Forest in Alpine County, California. It ignited a small fire that smoldered
00:22for days and a quarter acre of rugged terrain. California's firefighting agency, CAL FIRE,
00:28immediately dispatched a crew to put it out. But they were told to stand down by the U.S. Forest
00:34Service, which proceeded to, quote, monitor the fire instead. Every day, the Forest Service sent a
00:43helicopter over the fire to take video for their Facebook page, but not once did they drop a bucket
00:49of water on that fire to put it out. Twelve days later, the Tamarack fire exploded out of control,
00:55consuming nearly 70,000 acres. That's when I first introduced this bill, directing the Forest
01:02Service to aggressively attack fires when they're tiny and can be extinguished quickly. That bill
01:09passed out of this committee, but it was never taken up on the floor. Now, on July 4th of this year,
01:15the same thing happened on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Once again, it presents the entirely
01:22avoidable tragedy of a fire that was known about, could have easily and cheaply been extinguished,
01:29but instead was ignored until it exploded out of control. You know, the Forest Service once had a
01:36policy of aggressive initial attack when a fire is first spotted, and an informal rule to put out
01:41little fires before they can become big fires. This policy was abandoned in 1972 until it caused the
01:49disastrous Yellowstone fire of 1988. The Reagan administration restored that rule, but unfortunately,
01:57Reagan left the next year, and the let burn policy returned, and it's now cost us countless acres of
02:05forest land and countless millions of dollars of firefighting costs ever since. Now, the Forest
02:11Service argues that it needs to use fires as a forest management tool. Well, if that's the case,
02:17that tool should be carefully and deliberately applied when conditions warrant. Unplanned fires
02:25are not forest management tools. They are imminent threats to our forests and to our communities.
02:31Forest Service argues that they don't have the resources to put out little fires. Well, that's
02:37fatuous nonsense. It is obviously far cheaper to put out 100 little fires with a single airdrop or crew
02:45than to let one of them get out of control, requiring thousands of airdrops and hundreds of crews.
02:53It is dangerous nonsense to, quote, monitor incipient fires in today's forest tinderbox,
03:00even if they seem to pose no immediate danger. Now, no person in his right mind would monitor a
03:06rattlesnake curled up in his bedroom because it isn't doing much of anything. He'd kill it before it
03:11does. This bill restores the 10 a.m. rule requiring the Forest Service to launch aggressive initial
03:18attacks against all fires as soon as they're spotted. It forbids the Forest Service from
03:23preventing state and local fire agencies from attacking fires on federal land. It requires any
03:29prescribed fire that exceeds its boundaries to be immediately extinguished. And it requires that
03:35deliberately set backfires be approved by the incident commander and not indiscriminately set by an
03:41inexperienced ground crew. In our national forest, only the Forest Service can prevent small blazes from
03:47becoming forest fires. And it's time that they did. We also have an ANS that simply extends these
03:53provisions to all of the land management agencies in addition to the Forest Service.
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