As large chunks of the Western U.S. burned over the summer, lawmakers in Washington quietly inserted measures into the massive infrastructure package that they hope can be almost as potent as water in fighting them: cash.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill the Senate passed this month included $600 million to raise the pay of federally employed firefighters and to create 1,000 more federal firefighting jobs.
Experts say the funds are sorely needed to build a larger, better compensated force to fight fires that, because of climate change, will worsen in the coming years. At the same time, they say, it’s not nearly enough to tackle the intensifying infernos.
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“All the research we have shows this is going to be a century-long problem. That absolutely presents the dilemma that the measures in the Senate infrastructure bill, while nothing to sneeze at, are really nowhere close to enough,” said a wildfire policy expert, Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College.
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