Senators gave first-round approval March 25 to a bill that would establish new procedures for fighting and preventing wildfires.<\/p>\n
LB634, introduced by Hyannis Sen. Al Davis, would direct the Nebraska Forest Service to:
\n\u2022 contract with private aviation companies to place two single engine air tankers at airports near Chadron and Valentine during fire season;
\n\u2022 thin forests to reduce fuel loads, substantially reducing risk to residents, communities and emergency personnel;
\n\u2022 provide expanded training programs for volunteer firefighters, private landowners and communities in order to increase fire suppression effectiveness and safety;
\n\u2022 develop a Nebraska-based Type 3 incident management team that would serve as a comprehensive resource to augment and help manage large wildfire operations;
\n\u2022 expand the federal excess property programs managed by the Nebraska Forest Service to provide volunteer fire districts with fire suppression equipment; and
\n\u2022 rehabilitate forest lands that have been destroyed by wildfires.<\/p>\n
Davis said the bill would address serious deficiencies in the state\u2019s response to wildfires.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year was the worst land wildfire year in Nebraska\u2019s history,\u201d he said. \u201cThese megafires are occurring more frequently than in the past. It\u2019s time for Nebraska to take the steps to control these fires as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Natural Resources Committee amendment, adopted 36-0, designated the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency as responsible for carrying out the bill\u2019s provisions. Holdrege Sen. Tom Carlson said the bill would save the state money over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this bill is passed, we\u2019ll have planes in position to respond quickly to fires,\u201d Carlson said. \u201cIt will cost the state less money and will save a lot of property for the citizens of Nebraska.\u201d<\/p>\n
Omaha Sen. Bob Krist supported the bill, saying that timing is vitally important when it comes to fighting wildfires.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe right equipment and people need to be in place and overseeing the scene,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how many lives we can risk before putting in place some form of prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n
A technical amendment to the committee amendment was adopted 35-0. Senators voted to advance the bill to select file 36-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senators gave first-round approval March 25 to a bill that would establish new procedures for fighting and preventing wildfires. LB634,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[77],"class_list":["post-11042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-al-davis"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11043,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11042\/revisions\/11043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}