Emergency Wildfire Fighting Technology Act of 2025

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 836) to require the Secretary of Agriculture, acting through the Chief of the Forest Service, and the Secretary of the Interior to conduct an evaluation with respect to the use of the container aerial firefighting system (CAFFS), and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 836, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in strong support of Congressman Valadao's bill, the Emergency Wildfire Fighting Technology Act of 2025. This timely legislation offers us a chance to equip land managers with another tool in their arsenal to combat the catastrophic wildfire crisis by testing a new and innovative method for wildfire suppression.

Last month, wildfires in southern California took the lives of at least 29 people and changed thousands of lives forever. These fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures and racked up untold fire suppression costs and economic damages.

This tragedy is a wake-up call for millions of Americans and demonstrates just how important it is to proactively address the wildfire crisis. Unfortunately, decades of inadequate forest management have created an unprecedented forest health crisis. Across our country, 1 billion acres are now at risk of wildland fire. In the absence of dramatic change, the future outlook remains bleak.

When it comes to fighting these out-of-control infernos, it is critical that we utilize all available technologies that could improve the cost efficiency and effectiveness of fire suppression. Wildland firefighters on the front lines of these disasters must have all the tools and methods available to fight fires and protect lives and property.

Aircraft and helicopters provide lifesaving support to ground crews, often by delivering water or fire retardant. In order to drop water or fire retardant from a plane or helicopter, the aircraft must be designed or retrofitted for such purpose, which limits the number of aircraft available.

Representative Valadao has worked with various stakeholders who have developed and improved container aerial firefighting systems that drop water or fire retardant from aircraft via disposable containers. This technology could decrease the response time to wildfires by increasing the number of aircraft available, which could, in turn, save lives and critical infrastructure.

This technology is not new and is used successfully in other parts of the world. However, U.S. wildland firefighting agencies have not recently studied the system.

H.R. 836 would require the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to evaluate the use of container aerial firefighting systems in response to wildfires. The evaluation will focus on effectiveness, cost, ease of delivery, and safety.

Directing our wildfire firefighting agencies to study new and emerging technologies is a win for the wildland firefighting crews and a win for those who live in vulnerable, fire-prone areas.

I applaud Congressman Valadao for his leadership on this important topic. His legislation passed the House unanimously last year, and it has also passed the House twice with bipartisan support as part of the Fix Our Forests Act.

Mr. Speaker, I support the bill and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friends across the aisle for their overwhelming support of Representative Valadao's bill. We should have that kind of support for a bill that is addressing a huge issue in our country with wildland fire and the dangers that it imposes.

Mr. Speaker, I believe you and Mr. Valadao both serve on the Committee on Appropriations where Republicans brought an Interior appropriations bill to the floor with firefighter pay funding in that bill, and it was voted down by our friends across the aisle.

We do need to take care of our firefighters. When we get bills on the floor that increase pay for firefighters, I would hope we could get more bipartisan support on that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao), the lead sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 836 is a good, commonsense piece of legislation that has passed the House three times on a bipartisan basis.

I commend Representative Valadao for his proven leadership on bipartisan solutions that meaningfully improve forest health and reduce wildfires. If we could get the Senate to act on some of these bills, we wouldn't have to pass them so many times.

I appreciate Representative Valadao being so persistent and continuing to work on his good legislation. I encourage adoption of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of this legislation introduced by the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao).

In a few minutes, I will also have a lot to say about one of the bills that was abruptly and outrageously pulled from our agenda today, but right now, I am happy to support my friend's bill.

I point out that the text of this bill passed the House as part of Chair Westerman's H.R. 471 less than 2 weeks ago. I recognize that this is the beginning of a new Congress. Things are pretty chaotic, and our friends across the aisle want to appear busy amidst all the unconstitutional chaos and illegal action that is flooding our in-boxes and our newspapers, and we are constantly on the defensive because our democracy is under attack by someone who doesn't want to be a President--he wants to be a king--and has no regard for Article I of the Constitution.

We have silence from our friends across the aisle about all of that, but I guess we have time today to move a bill that we have already passed and that nobody opposes. Congratulations for this particular head-scratcher.

It is a real missed opportunity since we could be using this time to talk about critical issues like the Federal wildland firefighting pay and benefits that are set to expire a few weeks from now.

I think there is bipartisan support to extend those, but I can't get my friends across the aisle to talk about that, let alone come together and move some legislation to get it done.

Of course, fixing firefighter pay wasn't in the recent Republican package. It is not on the agenda today either. I hope we get to it at some point, but we are not doing it today, and that is a shame.

We should also be talking about disaster relief for California, but that is not on the agenda today either. Since we are considering this bill for a second time, Groundhog Day on this bill, instead of all of the other priorities, I will say committee Democrats continue to support this bill.

There is no opposition to this bill. We are going to pass it again and again, maybe, if we run out of other things to do this in this Congress.

The legislation would require relevant Federal agencies to complete an updated evaluation of the Container Aerial Firefighting System to support wildland fire mitigation and suppression efforts across the country. The system involves using a box or a container for aerial drops of water or fire retardant.

Its proponents claim that the utilization of this technology could improve delivery time and make it easier for aircrafts to fight fires. That is fine. That is a good thing.

However, back in 2011, the Forest Service conducted a study and determined that this particular system did not meet existing standards and posed safety risks to our communities and forests. Since that initial report, there have been technological advancements.

This bill aims to take another look at a potentially useful tool while ensuring the Forest Service retains its authority to decide if the tool is ready to use or not. This is an important safeguard for wildland firefighters and the communities who are impacted by the wildfire crisis.

As we saw in the recent southern California fires, the climate crisis is clearly increasing the severity and duration of wildfire season. Evaluating new technology that can help keep communities safe needs to be a priority.

This bill is one of many examples of the potential for truly bipartisan collaboration on the issue of wildfires. I hope we can keep this work going. I hope we can extend it to actually be a permanent fix for the firefighter pay problem that we need to address.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly didn't think I was engaging in personalities by talking about a President that wants to be a king. I thought I was just acknowledging the reality of what is happening in this country.

I was also referring to these 19-year-olds in hoodies that have been given read-write access to our most sensitive, personal data who are inside the Treasury Department's payment system right now rummaging through our private information doing who knows what.

We can't even get answers because our friends across the aisle don't want to talk about it. They want to rerun all these bills that we have already passed and that are, frankly, not opposed, and this is a waste of our time here on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' again on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the Emergency Wildfire Fighting Technology Act of 2025, which would dramatically increase the number of airlift assets available for wildfire emergencies.

Containerized Aerial Firefighting Systems, or CAFFS, are airdrop- capable disposable containers for water or fire retardant, which can be dropped from much higher altitudes and with less visibility than current aerial firefighting operations.

Current operations depend on single-mission aircraft, but CAFFS can be used by any standard cargo plane. The use of CAFFS provides for more coverage for firefighters on the ground and allows teams to quickly respond to prevent smaller fires from raging out of control.

These systems are used by other countries, but the United States has not utilized them. We have the technology that we can deploy to stop or minimize the devastation these fires cause, and we should be using it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chair Westerman and his staff at the Committee on Natural Resources for their work on this important bill to combat and contain wildfires in a quicker and more efficient way.