Merkley Out With Wildfire Legislation

New legislation from Oregon’s Jeff Merkley aims to help communities like Rowena recover from wildfire, even when they don’t qualify as a major federal disaster.  Merkley has pushed back against cuts to Forest Service staffing he claims slowed efforts to prevent catastrophic wildfires.

“They’ve greatly reduced the number of acres this year because they held up so many grants, so many partnerships,” the senator noted.

Merkley has also proposed help to clean up toxic debris left after a fire.

"We’ve had wildfires take out town after town," Merkley said.  "We saw some 50 houses burn by the Rowena Fire, but we didn’t qualify for the normal help we could have gotten to clean up the toxic messes that are left after a fire. You have all these products in a household when they burn, all kinds of plastic and other chemicals. And we need to be able to help those communities even if it doesn’t qualify as a major disaster."

Oregon’s governor approved state funds to clean up after the Rowena Fire, when FEMA said the fire failed to meet the threshold for a federal disaster designation.

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