Obama administration proposes treating wildfires as disasters

DENVER — Despite a wet spring over much of the nation, the Obama administration warned Tuesday of potentially catastrophic wildfires this summer, especially in the Southwest and Northwest.

“We’ve been very fortunate here in the central part of the country to have above-normal precipitation to allow us to postpone the fire season,” U.S. Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell said at a conference in Denver.

But as the summer heat dries out forests and rangeland, the fire danger will rise, said Tidwell, who joined Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell at the Denver briefing.

Southern Arizona and drought-stricken California are especially vulnerable to large, costly fires, Tidwell said. Washington, Oregon, northern Idaho and western Montana will face increasing fire danger later in the summer, he said.

The Agriculture and Interior departments said federal firefighting costs are expected to range from $1.1 billion to $2.1 billion this year. The high end would exceed their combined firefighting budget of about $1.4 billion.

If the costs exceed their firefighting budgets, the departments would have to transfer money from programs meant to reduce long-term fire danger by improving the health of forests and rangelands.

Vilsack, Jewell and Tidwell again asked Congress to allow the administration to take the cost of fighting the worst wildfires out of federal disaster funds, rather than their firefighting budgets, to protect fire prevention programs.

The Obama administration says the worst 1 percent of all wildfires account for about 30 percent of federal firefighting costs.