Senators passed a bill May 29 that establishes new procedures for fighting and preventing wildfires.<\/p>\n
LB634, introduced by Hyannis Sen. Al Davis, directs 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
The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency will be responsible for carrying out the bill\u2019s provisions.<\/p>\n
The bill passed on a 45-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senators passed a bill May 29 that establishes new procedures for fighting and preventing wildfires. LB634, introduced by Hyannis Sen.<\/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-12114","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\/12114","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=12114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12115,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12114\/revisions\/12115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}