Political Quotes

“last year, Colorado had a great snowpack in many areas of the State. In fact, the moisture, rain, and snowpack in many areas of Colorado led to a lot of growth, a lot of great spring grass, and a lot of undergrowth that came in. The problem is, when you have a wet year followed by a dry year, that same growth then turns into tinder during a drought. That is, unfortunately, what we have seen in parts of Colorado this year. Many parts of Colorado are experiencing some of the driest conditions they have seen in 70 or 80 years. On June 1, the 416 fire in Southwest Colorado was started. It started burning, and now about 35,000 acres of land have been gobbled up by this wildfire. There are also a number of other fires across Colorado: the Burro fire, the Buffalo Mountain fire, and there was a fire between Redvale and Montrose, CO. I come to the floor to bring attention to some of the actions we have taken, though, that have helped with fighting these fires and to talk about policies we need to put in place that can do a better job giving more tools to fight these fires and what we can do to help make firefighters do their jobs in a better, safer way. If you look at what we did these past years--a couple of months ago, we passed a bill that fixed the fire-borrowing crisis, which had consumed our wildfire fighting budget each and every year.…”