Editorial: Wildfire threat calls for restoring full funding

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By The Herald Editorial Board

Here’s the challenge in getting anyone during the winter months — lawmakers and homeowners, in particular — to take seriously the threat of wildfires in Washington state.

“It’s rainy, cold, wet, gray skies during the legislative session and legislators have a lot of competing demands” for funding and attention, said Hilary Franz, the state’s public lands commissioner and head of the Department of Natural Resources, which among myriad duties is the state’s largest firefighting agency.

Add to that a markedly successful season of firefighting and other efforts that last year limited the destruction from wildfires, even as the number of fires edged close to the record number of fires in 2015, the most destructive year for wildfires in the state’s history.

El Niño’s return: Yet Franz is uneasy about the coming wildfire season. The West is experiencing an El Niño climate pattern, which pushes the Pacific jet stream south, bringing warmer and drier weather to the Northwest.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-wildfire-threat-calls-for-restoring-full-funding/