Bill Frees Up Emergency Funds for Fire Prevention

Photo by Joanne Francis on Unsplash

Kevin Coughlin - CRR Staff

While snow still covers parts of the Copper River Basin, the fire season has already begun in the Lower 48. Alaskan firefighters, however, will now have the option to remain at home and get paid instead of leaving the state to find work.

House Bill 209, sponsored by Rep. Mike Cronk (R, Northway), will free up funding to pay emergency firefighting personnel for nonemergency activities, such as fire suppression and fuels reduction. Previously, emergency personnel could not be paid with state money for nonemergency work.

The bill received bipartisan co-sponsorship and was passed unanimously in the Senate before receiving House approval. It currently awaits Governor Mike Dunleavy’s signature (as of the writing of this article it had not been signed, but was expected to be).

The lone alteration to the bill from first reading to passage was changing the effective date to immediately upon signature. As Cronk pointed out, most bills take up to 90 days to go into effect, so moving up the effective date frees up funding for the beginning of this year’s in-state fire season.

“With the help from the Division (of Forestry),” Cronk said, “it was a pretty solid bill that didn’t need amendments.”

As fire seasons start earlier and last longer, fire prevention has become an integral component of firefighting.

Cronk worked as an emergency wildland firefighter as a college student in the 1990s and later served as a transporter of firefighting crews. While transporting crews about 20 years ago, he started noticing that most of the crews were from Outside.

In fact, in-state crews have been dwindling over the years, from more than 70 in the 1990s to 56 in 2010 to fewer than 10 today.

Cronk can’t explain the “weird shift in dynamics” that led to the exodus of in-state crews, but said, “The bottom line is we don’t have enough (in-state) fire crews and this is a way of rebuilding our crews” by providing stable work from May to October.

At an April 4 hearing of the Senate Resources committee, Division of Forestry Chief of Fire & Aviation Norm McDonald said the state is “critically understaffed.”

“The Division of Forestry currently does not have sufficient personnel to staff both fire suppression and fuels reduction,” McDonald said.

As fire seasons start earlier and last longer, fire prevention has become an integral component of firefighting. HB 209 will require no additional funding, but will instead rely on a combination of federal and state funding already in place for such work.

Both Cronk and McDonald pointed out that hiring Lower 48 crews costs twice as much as employing in-state crews. HB 209 “will keep our money local,” Cronk said. “It will have a huge economic impact on rural communities.”

Mike Trimmer, Fire Management Officer for the Valdez Copper River Area (part of the Division of Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry), considers the legislation “a long time overdue.” Trimmer, who, like Cronk, began firefighting in Alaska in the 1990s, also bemoaned the loss of in-state fire crews over the last 30 years.

“We’ve lost most of our workforce to other jobs,” Trimmer said. The old law forbade using emergency funding for nonemergency fire work, and left Trimmer “unable to hire unless there’s a fire.”

“An emergency is not the time to hire people,” he said. “I could’ve been Firewising (doing fire-prevention work), and I intend to do so now.”

However, now that there will be funding for more firefighters, Trimmer observed there are fewer trained firefighters to hire. A recent Red Card class produced about a half dozen potential firefighters, but Trimmer said the workforce needs to be revitalized.

Cronk and McDonald hope the pending reinstatement of the Wildland Fire Academy helps in that capacity. From 2010 to 2018, the academy provided in-state firefighting training, before funding eroded to nothing. Governor Dunleavy’s budget includes $500,000 yearly to restart the academy.

McDonald said HB 209 would “dovetail” with this move. In a briefing paper, McDonald said the academy would result in 50 to 60 students annually obtaining Red Cards to fight wildland fires.

“Academies will be offered in rural communities such as Tok, Delta, and McGrath,” McDonald said in the paper. “Focusing on building capacity in rural communities will help address the shortage of trained firefighters there.”

In all-bold lettering, McDonald said, “Alaska must become self-sufficient in fighting wildfires to adequately protect Alaskan lives, homes and property. Funding and reinstating the Wildland Fire Academy is one of several steps to achieve this self-reliance.”

Sen. Click Bishop (R, Fairbanks) carried HB 209 to the Senate floor as a courtesy to Cronk, whose district he shares. Bishop was also the state Commissioner of Labor in 2010 and was involved in the creation of the Wildland Fire Academy.

Bishop echoed McDonald and Cronk’s sentiments. “We need to have our core assets trained to fight for life and property, especially in rural areas,” Bishop said.