Political Quotes

“I offer this amendment along with my colleagues Mr. Peter King of New York and Mr. Raul Ruiz of California. The amendment is small, but its impact is large and very important to our three districts and many others across the country that have rural towns with volunteer fire departments. All this amendment does is increase funding for the Volunteer Fire Assistance grant program from $13 million to $15 million. VFA funds are awarded to volunteer fire departments that protect small communities of less than 10,000 people and help them prepare to respond to wildfires. Sadly, I have a perfect example of this need in my district right now. The small town of Nederland in Boulder County, Colorado, is battling the Cold Springs forest fire, with the fire crews largely made up of volunteers, initially. As just one example, Charlie Schmidtmann, who is a captain with the Nederland Fire Protection District, and Bretlyn Schmidtmann, who is an ER nurse, a paramedic, and volunteer firefighter already lost their home to the Cold Springs fire, even as they continue to work to save neighbors' homes. It is this sort of heroic work that we need to support through the funding that they need so they have the tools that they need to fight fires swiftly and effectively. For some reason, we still don't treat fires the way we treat other natural disasters. Wildfires are underfunded when it comes to mitigation, prevention, and suppression.…”