Amid Devastating Wildfires, Cantwell Calls for Better Wildfire Preparedness in Roundtable with Fire Chief, Other Experts

Amid Devastating Wildfires, Cantwell Calls for Better Wildfire Preparedness in Roundtable with Fire Chief, Other Experts

Cantwell at Senate roundtable forum on extreme weather: "We just have to move faster"; Bob Roper, Western Fire Chiefs Association: "Fires don't respect jurisdictional lines."

WASHINGTON, D.C. - With 16 large, active wildfires burning in Central and Eastern Washington, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, spoke today about wildfire preparedness at a Senate extreme weather roundtable.

"My heart goes out to the people of Washington who are dealing with this across our state, particularly in Spokane, and in the Lake Chelan area as well," said Sen. Cantwell. "Between Washington and Oregon, we've hit a record for the amount of acreage that has been burning."

"Technology can play a big role," continued Sen. Cantwell. "We have to show people that the connection between the information that we can get, and then the actual action plan that we can put into place, that's where that's where the gaps are."

Bob Roper, former fire chief of the Ventura County Fire District and current Senior Policy Advisor for the Western Chiefs Fire Association, said in response: "We have found that across the country … that we don't have good data standards. We're not sharing data widely, and that there's not an orchestrated plan on what to do with the data and intelligence."

Added Roper: "The fires don't respect jurisdictional lines. We need to make sure that federal, state, tribal, and public and private are all working collectively together as far as one entity."

On Sunday, Sen. Cantwell visited county and city command centers in Spokane and took part in a press briefing about the devastating fires there.

In September 2025, Sen. Cantwell's Fire Ready Nation Act passed the U.S. Senate unanimously. The bipartisan Fire Ready Nation Act would formally establish a permanent Fire Weather Services program within NOAA and authorize funding for new technologies to forecast weather conditions that cause and impact wildfires.

A background document detailing Sen. Cantwell's work to bolster wildfire preparedness is available HERE.

A video of Sen. Cantwell's Q&A with panelists is available HERE; a transcript of Sen. Cantwell's Q&A is HERE.