All levels of government need better tools to predict the location and timing of wildfires, which destroy property but also cause health problems for firefighters and the public, lawmakers were told Wednesday.
Mark Goeller, the Oklahoma state forester and director of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, told the House Space, Science and Technology Committee that a partnership between his state and the National Weather Service makes early detection of fires possible and improves the firefighting response.
"These advances in fire weather forecasting and wildfire detection by the National Weather Service during high to extreme fire dangers has allowed state, federal and local firefighting agencies to target aggressive initial attack in areas where wildfire would have the greatest potential and impact the loss of lives, values at risk, and natural resources," said Goeller.
The need to better predict and respond to wildfires is acute because climate change is causing them to become larger and occur with more frequency, experts say.
“I'm sure many of my Western colleagues would agree that there's not much of a true wildfire season anymore. They seem to occur year-round,” said committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla.
“In 2022 alone, the National Interagency Fire Center reported almost 69,000 fires that burned seven and a half million acres of land in the United States.”
Lucas said the purpose of the hearing was to ensure state and local emergency managers have the most accurate information possible to respond to fires.
“There's no silver bullet to completely prevent fires. But we can make significant progress in protecting our communities if we improve the forecasting and prediction of weather conditions that lead to fires,” Lucas said.
Along with the threat to human life and the damage to land and property, the cost of fighting wildfires is increasing. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the federal government spent over $4 billion to suppress fires in 2021, double what it cost in 2020.
The committee's ranking Democrat, Zoe Lofgren of California, said she is re-introducing the National Wildland Fire Risk Reduction Program Act this week. The bill aims to coordinate federal efforts to predict wildland fires and adopt “science-based and cost-effective measures” to prevent them.
“At the federal level, while there is coordination when it comes to wildfire response, there’s significant gaps in coordination when it comes to increasing scientific understanding, prediction, resilience, and communication for wildland fires,” she said.
Lofgren said there are “mountains of data” being collected across the academic, private and public sectors. However, there is “inadequate coordination and dissemination of that data.”
It’s easy to sign up for a FREE month of Agri-Pulse news! For the latest on what’s happening in Washington, D.C. and around the country in agriculture, just click here.
"We can't just keep responding to disasters, we need to invest more in preventing them where we can,” Lofgren said.
Goeller touted Oklahoma's Mesonet system, which uses remote weather stations across the state to help fire managers monitor conditions.
He said that keeping fires small can protect communities and save a lot of money.
“For NOAA to be able to have additional funding to support that effort nationwide is really something that needs to happen,” Goeller said, referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s regulation of drones came under criticism at the hearing.
The witnesses at the hearing included James Peverill, CEO of GreenSight, a robotics company from Boston. GreenSight developed a weather measurement system called WeatherHive that uses drones for “hyper precise forecasting” to enhance the accuracy of severe weather forecasts, including wildfires.
But Peverill told the committee that the FAA must address its drone regulations if these technologies are to be scaled.
“WeatherHive is designed to operate with minimal risk to aviators, people, and property while promising to offer significant overall benefits to public safety,” Peverill said. “I look forward to working with the FAA to ensure that our progress in these technologies is not limited so that we can continue to partner with the federal government to improve mission success.”
The committee also discussed how more research and development could improve understanding of fire weather.
Ali Tohidi, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at San Jose State University and the co-principal investigator of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center where he researches wildfire behavior, said there are knowledge gaps in understanding fire behavior as well as challenges that limit the development of and use of current models.
He said increased investments in research could improve the ability to predict how hot fires are and where they’ll go.
“We need to establish infrastructures to centralize and standardize and integrate wildfire related datasets,” Tohidi said.
