Introduced in the Utah House, HB 307 Utah Wildfire Fund, was created to manage the costs related to wildfires statewide, including suppression and prevention.
Sponsored by Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, the legislation aims to streamline wildfire management processes, provide necessary funding to tackle wildfire risks and clarify responsibilities at the state and local levels for suppressing and mitigating wildfire damage. This would be achieved in part by streamlining funding, such as replacing the Wildland Fire Suppression Fund with the new Utah Wildfire Fund.
“Wildfire, in this state, requires three mechanisms to get ahead of it. One is pre-fire suppression. Two is actual on-the-ground suppression, and three is post-fire mitigation,” Snider said. “Right now, our state is set up that we have dispersed programs that cover all three, but at times they don’t communicate.”
Snider used the Silver King wildfire in central Utah this past summer as an example. The wildfire suppression account was used and provided all the funds necessary to supply on-the-ground resources. Snider said there were significant issues regarding potential threats from erosion and monsoonal problems. Some mechanisms were not in place to address those issues at the “same speed and on the same scale that we had when we fought the fire.”
There are programs that could have helped prevent the severity of the Silver King fire, but Snider added, “they’re desperate, and they were not integrated into a longterm plan.”
Read the full story at St. George News. This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aim to inform readers across the state.
Source: Utah News