{"id":4143,"date":"2023-03-21T16:57:12","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T23:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=4143"},"modified":"2023-06-02T17:20:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-03T00:20:39","slug":"harris-unveils-197-million-for-wildfire-resilience-as-californias-fire-season-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2023\/03\/21\/harris-unveils-197-million-for-wildfire-resilience-as-californias-fire-season-looms\/","title":{"rendered":"Harris unveils $197 million for wildfire resilience as California\u2019s fire season looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Storm-ravaged Californians are still digging out from historic levels of snowfall and girding for more heavy rain this week. But Biden administration officials are looking ahead to a wildfire season that could bring more devastation once the state dries out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vice President Kamala Harris detailed $197 million in new federal grants on Monday to help fortify high-risk communities against wildfires.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article, the Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n

More than 100 communities scattered across 22 states and seven tribes will receive funding to supplement pay for wildland firefighters and provide housing for fire personnel as part of the Biden administration\u2019s wildfire defense grant program.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Dixie fire burns along Highway 70 in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on July 16, 2021.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe used to talk about wildfire season. Now, wildfire season is all year round,\u201d Harris said on a press call with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu. \u201cWe know the best time to fight a fire is before it starts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-nine of the grants will go to California communities and organizations.<\/p>\n

Kern County will receive $2.2 million to train firefighters to conduct controlled burns and educate homeowners about reducing risk of wildfires, including cleaning rain gutters of dry sticks and leaves, which can be flammable agents, and covering vents to block flying embers.<\/p>\n

Butte County\u2019s fire department will receive $1.5 million to purchase excavator equipment for an 8,000-acre hazardous fuel reduction project and $4.9 million for defensible space inspections, which encourage homeowners to clear vegetation around their houses to reduce the possibility of wildfires setting them ablaze.Tuolumne County will receive $10 million to inspect 1,290 homes, clear brush along approximately 23 miles of road and promote wildfire management education.<\/p>\n

The grants will also boost U.S. Forest Service and Department of Interior funding for prescribed burning, brush-clearing and other wildfire-prevention tactics.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s Bipartisan Infrastructure bill and Biden\u2019s signature climate and social spending package allocated $7 billion in funding for government agencies involved in wildfire management. The latest funding is an initial round and more money will be made available to other communities affected by wildfires, Vilsack said.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s wet season isn\u2019t over yet. Central and Southern California residents are bracing for more rainfall after enduring 11 atmospheric river storms that dumped rain and snow across the state this winter. The storm systems, which pull moisture from the tropical Pacific, triggered mass flooding and breached levees.<\/p>\n

Though the heavy rain and snow have brought some relief to the drought-stricken state, the precipitation could lead to extra growth of brush and grass that quickly turn to kindling in the summer and autumn months, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.<\/p>\n

He pointed to the last wettest winter on record in parts of Northern California. A long, hot summer followed the winter of 2016-17, ultimately triggering the destructive Northern California firestorm in October 2017, including the Tubbs fire that devastated Santa Rosa. The severity of this year\u2019s fire season will depend on how quickly the snowpack melts and whether temperatures heat up this spring and summer, Swain said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because we have a really wet winter does not mean that it\u2019s obviously a mild fire season everywhere,\u201d he added. \u201cBut it does change the dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n

California wildfires have increased in both size and intensity over the last two decades, a pattern that has left little time for recovery between blazes. Harris recalled visiting communities ravaged by the Tubbs fire in 2017, the Camp fire in 2018 and the Creek fire in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have seen entire neighborhoods burned to the ground. I have been in neighborhoods where the only thing left standing [were] the chimneys, which looked almost like tombstones,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Also on Monday, the United Nations released a bleak report that called on rich countries, including the U.S., to reach net zero emissions by 2040, a decade earlier than developing countries. The world is likely to exceed its climate target of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial times in the 2030s, a threshold that would yield catastrophic climate disasters, the report found.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe assessment is dire,\u201d Harris said of the UN report. \u201cOur future is not yet written and the solutions are at hand. So let that be an alarm that lets us know that we must act with haste and we can actually, right now, have an impact on how this all plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Storm-ravaged Californians are still digging out from historic levels of snowfall and girding for more heavy rain this week. But Biden administration officials are looking ahead to a wildfire season that could bring more devastation once the state dries out. Vice President Kamala Harris detailed $197 million in new federal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,11,24,7,23,8,14,16,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budget-and-spending","category-california","category-drought","category-environment","category-fire-hazard","category-global-warming","category-national","category-southwest","category-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4151,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4143\/revisions\/4151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}