As Biden mulls a $1.7B bump, Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen says last year’s fire season a call to action. U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon agrees.
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“Flintstone, MD Volunteer Fire Company” by Lee Cannon is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
LITTLE ROCK – The Rural Fire Protection program, managed by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s Forestry Division, received $294,442.24 to purchase and distribute 96 Wildfire Suppression Kits to rural volunteer fire departments. The money was awarded as part of the Volunteer Fire Assistance Grant from the United States Forest Service.
Volunteer fire departments are the primary partner of Forestry Division crews in wildfire response and suppression, but they are often in need of the specialized equipment and gear necessary for safe wildfire suppression. The equipment distributed this year in the Wildfire Suppression Kits included lightweight wildfire-resistant coveralls and gloves, hand rakes, back-pack water pumps, and leaf blowers. Since 2014, more than 490 volunteer fire departments have received Wildfire Suppression Kits through the Rural Fire Protection program valued at $1,499,411
Fire Hazard Map
Sacramento, CA– For the 21st year in a row, CAL FIRE and Resource Assessment Program have collected and made available to the public the spatial records of the perimeter of wildfires and prescribed fire in California. This data contains 500 fires and covers over 97 percent of the acres burned in 2020.
The data is used for a variety of reasons by many groups such as fire and habitat managers, academia, homeowners, media, insurance companies, and power supply companies. Additionally CAL FIRE uses the information for the following reasons, as input in fire effects analysis, analysis of drivers of fire occurrence, evaluation of fuel treatment effectiveness, and estimating spatially explicit burn probability for use in hazard assessment updates to CAL FIRE fu